Fun with chemistry (2)

You can have loads of fun with potassium. During undergraduate practical chemistry one of the chaps on my bench decided he'd dispose of excess potassium by throwing it down the sink. Trouble is, someone else had decided to get rid of some ether in the same fashion. The potassium caught fire in the pipework and ignited the ether, leading to a minor explosion. All six sinks on the bench were connected by the same waste pipes. Some had the plugs in, with an inch or two of water at the bottom, others did not. We were treated to a firework display from each sink in rapid succession. Jets of fire issued from some, fountains of water from others, with the plugs being shot through the expanded polystyrene ceiling tiles. Exciting stuff; amazingly, no one was hurt.

Another chap dropped quite a lot of potassium on his bench. This immediately ignited. The recommended procedure in these circumstances is to cover the spillage with sand, cutting off the oxygen supply. To be fair, the guilty party did not try to extinguish the fire with water. Instead he turned on a carbon dioxide extinguisher. The effect of a powerful jet of gas was to split one largish lump of molten flaming potassium into scores of flaming droplets and rivulets which were propelled by the gas all over the laboratory. Luckily these all burnt out very quickly, with very little damage and no injury. Spectacular, but not recommended.

Fun with chemistry (1)

When I was a lad, someone showed me how easy it was to make the explosive nitrogen triiodide by adding iodine to an aqueous solution of ammonia. The nice thing about this stuff is that it's perfectly safe when wet but readily explodes when dry, even if touched gently. It's also not particularly dangerous. I used to love applying the wet stuff to the concrete paths at home and watching the family jump out of their skins when they walked on it.

We made some at school one evening. After filtering the stuff to remove most of the water we dumped the filter papers in the waste paper bin, completely overlooking these would dry out overnight. When the cleaner came to empty the bin next morning the whole lot exploded enveloping her in a purple iodine cloud. We should have been soundly punished for that, but for some reason were not. We probably blamed it on someone else.

IWHistory (4)

My inorganic chemistry tutor was called BEF Fender. He was probably quite good at inorganic chemistry. He might even have loved his dear old mum and been kind to animals. He was definitely a thoughtless, self-opinionated git. We were supposed to have a one-hour tutorial every week but he arrived anything up to 45 minutes late (during which time we were expected to wait dutifully outside his rooms) but always left pretty much on time (which was a bonus). Once day when he turned up late he excused himself by saying he didn't have a wristwatch. When I enquired why not, he explained he had once been walking through London and was about to look at his watch when he heard Big Ben and had been able to look up and see the time without having to make the effort of taking his hand out of his pocket and pushing up his sleeve. This experience had, he said, revealed wristwatches to be superfluous. I observed it was a pity Big Ben was not in the centre of Oxford to enable him to get to tutorials on time. After a few weeks of this I got pissed off and, having waited five minutes, returned to my room. He was quite unpleasant when he knocked on the door half an hour later, despite being offered a cup of coffee and the use of my room for his tutorial. But he was, subsequently, reasonably prompt. The sod ended up as Vice Chancellor of a Welsh University. He should have been cleaning their toilets.

IWHistory (3)

Philosophic: "What happened with your first degree? I think we should be told."

Not much to tell, really. After working hard at school, and enjoying it, I was accepted by St Catherine's College, Oxford, to read chemistry. I felt very pleased with myself until I discovered I was completely out of my depth - everyone was much cleverer than I and had got there without doing a stroke, or so they said. On top of that the chemistry course was a drag and most of the people I met were sneering loud-mouthed private school prats. Horrid they were. (I suppose it's quite sensible, in theory, to build places like Eton and Oxford to try to keep nauseating turds like this all in one place, but they really should warn the rest of us.) I seriously considered throwing it all in, but just in time met a group of what seemed like fairly normal people - the university bellringers. These fine fellows introduced me to 24/7 (as they say nowadays) boozing and curries. And a bit of bellringing. I never looked back.

In those days there were exams at the end of the first and third years. Having scraped through the first of these I resolved to spend the second year doing the least amount of work possible. When it came to starting revision for finals I tried looking at a few books, realized it was far too late, and so spent the third year in the same way as the second. I can't remember why I decided to turn up for finals, but it's a good job I did, because I ended up with a 2nd/3rd borderline degree. I guess Oxford chemistry teaching must have been better than I had recognized.

Worth the money?

I was at a party on Saturday. One of the guests was a GP. I thought I'd wind him up by asking if he was enjoying spending his quarter of a million a year. He took it quite well. Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking GPs - every day they have to deal with an endless stream of the dregs of humanity moaning about their runny noses or a broken finger nail. Cut them off or pull it out, I'd say. And without anaesthetic. There's really no way I could cope with such pond life, even for a quarter of a million a year. But I digress. When we got home the missus and I were discussing medics' salaries and I was wondering whether any doctor was worth a quarter of a million a year. "What about the best brain surgeon in the whole world?" suggested the missus. This got me thinking. We all talk as if brain surgery (like rocket science) is really tricky, but is it any more difficult than, for example, replacing a knee joint? Do brain surgeons really do any more than crack open the skull as they would a boiled egg and then dig around with a spoon to remove the bits that have gone bad?