As someone who has done many of the things mentioned in this discussion and in addition been sprayed with mercury vapour, washed in benzene etc, etc, I must say that I am very glad the bad old days when 'anything goes' in a laboratory have gone. However, I have heard that Health and Safety legislation is being reviewed and those bad old days are on their way back, which I think would be A VERY BAD THING.
Malcolm Povey
-----Original Message-----
From: psci-com: on the public understanding of science [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jo Brodie
Sent: 28 September 2004 16:28
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PSCI-COM] Am I behind the times...?
Didn't a recent advert for teachers include a Van der Graaf generator?
Probably I should consider myself lucky for being old enough (34) to have burned and zapped myself in chemistry and physics classes!
Unfortunately a girl at my school did injure herself - she leaned over a Bunsen burner and set her hair alight (it probably didn't help that she was using cocoa-butter styling products) and singed her eyebrows.
Ouch!
I seem to remember my physics teacher trying to distil alcohol (I don't know why it was him and not my chemistry teacher though) and flambéeing himself and the bench with methylated spirits - he didn't come to any great harm...
We played around with toluene as well (in fact I'm fairly sure I've used that and benzene fairly recently - about 8 years ago while in the lab).
My only regret is never having launched a succession of group 1 metals into a glass basin of water, but I enjoyed the 'schools' movie showing exactly that.
Jo 'ka-boom' Brodie
Science Information Team, Diabetes UK
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