Ah, Emil, that explains everything.
Friday Afternoon Thread........Technicians' Horror Stories
- Thread starter Purple Cat
- Start date
Oooh, you've made me fancy a bar of fruit & nut! Mmmm
Oh dear, yes those bloomin glue sticks, always loads on the floor (along with brand new green pens and pencils...)
My story happened at the last Open Evening...
So as you guys know, teachers have a tendency to show off a bit (or a lot) in front of parents.
I was new and so wasn't used to their 'ways' yet. The Science was split into two classrooms, Biology and Physics in one (the bog standard Physics equipment and some lungs and pre prepared slides etc for Biology) and in the other classroom was the Chemistry.
At my last place, everything was done safely and to the book and so I wasn't expecting much different. I went over the CLEAPSS guidance and checked how they were going to do everything and got assurances from them they would stick to it.
Well.
Alkali metals were taken out last minute and left unattended, Bunsen burners all out with unattended Year 6 chn carrying out flame tests, and the room was absolutely packed you couldn't move. I was just coming back from the Physics/Bio classroom and I walked into this scene:
"Can I have another volunteer?" Parent covered hands and arms in methane bubble mixture. Son sets him alight. Then the parent panics and waves arms and sets the whole washing up bowl of bubbles alight!
The night ended with me shouting over the mass of children and parents, "No. Sir, no more please. Thank you." when he was adding bigger and bigger pieces of alkali metals.
My story happened at the last Open Evening...
So as you guys know, teachers have a tendency to show off a bit (or a lot) in front of parents.
I was new and so wasn't used to their 'ways' yet. The Science was split into two classrooms, Biology and Physics in one (the bog standard Physics equipment and some lungs and pre prepared slides etc for Biology) and in the other classroom was the Chemistry.
At my last place, everything was done safely and to the book and so I wasn't expecting much different. I went over the CLEAPSS guidance and checked how they were going to do everything and got assurances from them they would stick to it.
Well.
Alkali metals were taken out last minute and left unattended, Bunsen burners all out with unattended Year 6 chn carrying out flame tests, and the room was absolutely packed you couldn't move. I was just coming back from the Physics/Bio classroom and I walked into this scene:
"Can I have another volunteer?" Parent covered hands and arms in methane bubble mixture. Son sets him alight. Then the parent panics and waves arms and sets the whole washing up bowl of bubbles alight!
The night ended with me shouting over the mass of children and parents, "No. Sir, no more please. Thank you." when he was adding bigger and bigger pieces of alkali metals.
Purple Cat
It's real Science not Rocket Science
!!!!!
Technician Q
(she/her)
Had a teacher who was obsessed with gyroscopes. They couldn't get the bicycle wheel up to speed so borrowed the drill from the preproom to give it a boost. Part of the rim of the wheel gave way (it had a solid rubber [perished] tyre) and hit a student. It is now reinforced with about three rolls of insulation tape, although they then insisted on buying a really fancy gyroscope and switched to playing with that instead (which they can do over a padded Gratnell) so it doesn't get requested now.
I found a 500g bottle of dry picric acid at the back of a cupboard under a fume cupboard...
That's enough to make a pop...fire brigade / bomb squad job?
Just reading these thinking, 'Thank God for technicians!'
As I had picked it up before I could see what it was, I carefully put it in the fume cupboard. The paper-wrapped cork lid was loose, so I added plenty of water, and then contacted someone who could deal with it as waste chemical - They wouldn't touch it unless I put it in a big BDH container filled with water too.
I should add this was about 35 years ago
I found a smaller bottle of it in the old science block building that was being cleared for demolition about 5 years ago. I'd never heard of it before then. That was a bomb squad job, it was carted off to the local RAF base and detonated on their range. I'd only been here a couple of months and was convinced CLEAPSS were kidding when they told me. Not the best way to introduce yourself to the principal! After that she always introduced me to visitors as 'the lady who called the bomb squad'. And to make matters worse, a couple of months later we found a dried up bottle of 2,4 DNP shoved in the bottom of a fume cupboard at the other site that a previous tech had left for us.
wenchem
Wenchem
Ah yes, I remember the day the bomb squad was called for our very dried up white powder that was 2,4 DNPH. Detonated on the field behind the school in the early evening. Made quite a big explosion!
Oh no! I was head of science at one of the closing middle school but these ones don't sound like us! County wanted nothing to do with the chem stock so a couple of the HS teachers came and took everything in the back of their cars.
At an old independent school I found a bag of live bullets stored with the sodium, potassium and lithium. When I inquired what they were. a teacher told me that one of the teachers had a party trick of biting the top of a live bullet at Open Days. Why they were stored with the alkali metals Ill never know.
I had an old school teacher just like that! He used to get stuff out himself (physics prep was right next to his lab) and mention it in passing that he had got a few bits out. Walked into the lab to find most of the preproom in the.lab.We had a teacher who retired last year who always had at least one roll of magnesium ribbon, a glue stick, board pens and a random bit of locktronics in his lab coat pockets.
He's been back a few times this year to do cover, which is great because he's happy to go ahead with planned practicals.
Guess what we aways put in his lab coat pockets
I've had a teacher carefully cut a small piece of potassium, put that back in the bottle and put the big piece in the trough. The bang was great.
And a teacher carefully explained that ' the technician had weighed out aluminium oxide and iron powder to to the thermite reaction.'
All the teachers kept asking me if we had some and seemed quite disappointed when I said we hadn't...
That sounds shocking!