Monday, May 16, 2011

I took Chemistry because I wanted to set stuff on fire

I may try to tell you other reasons, but, in truth, I just wanted to watch stuff explode. I had a vision of multi-colored liquids boiling over bunsen burners in glass beakers and making stuff blow up. Little did I know that my year in chemistry would mostly entail math equations and labs with the excitment level of watching ice melt (one of my labs was actually watching ice melt, which is even more boring when your hot plate is not on.) The year is coming to an end and my chem final is on Friday, so we are mostly reviewing now. One thing we are reviewing is limiting reactants, which I can tell you absolutely nothing about because I do not remember it in the least. Although, I did find my notes on that subject today while digging through a giant pile of history notes looking for my Spanish vocabulary, which I also found. Anyway, we didn't do the lab for limiting reactants because my teacher's wife was "having a baby" or some other nonsense like that. So, today my teacher was like "we are finally going to do the lab today because it is the only fun one ever!!" (He may not have said that last part). The lab is called The Methane Bubble Lab (ooooooh it already sounds exciting).

It is basically just mixing up soapy water in a petri dish, sticking a tube connected to the main gas line into the water, making bubbles and setting it on fire. It is so simple, yet the best thing in the entire world. The best part about the whole thing is that we didn't have to do any work attached to it, we just got to set stuff on fire!

Okay, I lied, there is an even better part to this whole thing. You can put the soapy water in you hands and set that on fire. That is definitely the best part.
some noob other than myself doing the lab
I stole this from some random photography site and it saved on my computer as "copyrighted picture" so I will probably get sued for posting this. Here is the link to the site if you feel so inclined to view this picture "legally." It also has instructions to do the lab, so if you would like to do some super awesome chemistry, you totally can. Just let me know if you can find a source of methane gas, I will bring the soap.

Cheers,
Cayla

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