A little more detail would have killed them?

When your boss gives you the sack when you've lost all his invoices, DON'T drink a bottle of sulfuric acid. Relax, make some stupid noises.

poh-TAY-toh, poh-TAH-toh. I mean, really, they're pretty much interchangeable, right?

Wow, that article told us absolutely nothing.

JackieRabbit: A little more detail would have killed them?

Are you asking us or telling us?

came here thinking he'd mistaken it for Sprite. OBEY YOUR THIRST!

Savian: Wow, that article told us absolutely nothing.

Seconded. The article could have at least explained why that caused the evacuation.

Did it give off poisonous gas?

Was the resulting mixture potentially explosive?

Really, what?

JackieRabbit: A little more detail would have killed them?

A little more detail would have given great public insight on how to make a bomb.

Female teacher, never let chicks handle dangerous substances

and by mid-afternoon, the teacher and another woman -- both in their 30s -- and a 16-year-old male student were all hospitalized, according to Brian Humphrey of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Pssh. If the teachers had been male, and the student had been a 16-year-old female, they'd be calling for this guy's head.

Any chemistry nerds have an idea as to why this caused a problem that required the school to evacuate? Neither is too bad on its own, sure you can get some acid burns, but that's contained to a single room. I'm assuming the mistake caused a reaction with another unnamed substance?

Nitric acid.

Could also be easily mistaken for a urine sample.

I love the stock photo of some guy holding an Erlenmeyer flask with his bare hands over the opening. If that photo is supposed to show some clear chemical in the flask, not water, then only a dumbass would use his hands and not a stopper.

/Ooooh, 6M hydrochloric! Glacial acetic! No gloves, no worries!

TravisBickle62: Female teacher, never let chicks handle dangerous substances

Is this a semen joke?

Virtue: JackieRabbit: A little more detail would have killed them?

A little more detail would have given great public insight on how to make a bomb.

Anyone can make a bomb. It's so freakin' easy. And you can get everything you need at Home Depot.

offmymeds: [upload.wikimedia.org image 256x341]

Nitric acid.

Could also be easily mistaken for a urine sample.

whatcha making ?

now i have to post my bottle of mercury

JaaVaa: TravisBickle62: Female teacher, never let chicks handle dangerous substances

Is this a semen joke?

arent they all?

At least they learned why you should always label the flasks.

JackieRabbit: A little more detail would have killed them?

She added the sulfuric to sugar instead of the nitric.

AngryJailhouseFistfark: It's pronounced "dew-MAH."

Because People in power are Stupid: Poor little Johnny,
Isn't Johnny anymore,
For what he thought was H2O,
Was H2SO4

One of my techs diluted chloric acid with what she thought was DI water but was actually a sucrose solution. It turned a very dark brown and looked just like Pepsi. I still have the label that I printed up for it. I taped it to the bottle and left it up on the shelf. Eventually we decided that it was just a tad too much liability and the chuckles were long over so we tossed it.

Problem is, the article did not even tell us what kind of experiment the teacher was trying to do.

JesseL: Since when is water not a chemical?

Okay, I was thinking from the POV of the photographer and to most laymen water is just something that falls from the sky and you can go tubing in it. Happy?

Teacher dissolved sugar in nitric acid rather than sulfuric acid. The result was oxalic acid, the fumes of which aren't good to breathe in.

I am probably wrong,

If you mis sulfuric acid with sugar, you get a big growing carbon marshmallow or something.

If you do the same with nitric acid you get nitro glycerine.

MAYORBOB: Teacher dissolved sugar in nitric acid rather than sulfuric acid. The result was oxalic acid, the fumes of which aren't good to breathe in.

Article says teacher mistook H2SO4 for HNO3, not the other way around.

if you drink nitric acid it helps making you stronger

Link

JackieRabbit: A little more detail would have killed them?

I'm thinking they got an unexpected roomful of H₂S, and admin freaked out.

/Rotten eggs smell in case you didn't know

MAYORBOB: Teacher dissolved sugar in nitric acid rather than sulfuric acid. The result was oxalic acid, the fumes of which aren't good to breathe in.

If it was oxalic acid, well, some people are sensitive. But I think the opposite happened, and they ended up with sulphur dioxide or hydrogen sulfide, or something like that.

Jon iz teh kewl: AngryJailhouseFistfark: It's pronounced "dew-MAH."

[upload.wikimedia.org image 220x149]

Good gravy. Back in the day, was their Mountain Dew's mascot really a hillbilly that says, "I'll tickle your innards?"

JackieRabbit: Virtue: JackieRabbit: A little more detail would have killed them?

A little more detail would have given great public insight on how to make a bomb.

Anyone can make a bomb. It's so freakin' easy. And you can get everything you need at Home Depot.

The next sound you hear, citizen, will be the authorities knocking at you door

theorellior: I love the stock photo of some guy holding an Erlenmeyer flask with his bare hands over the opening. If that photo is supposed to show some clear chemical in the flask, not water, then only a dumbass would use his hands and not a stopper.

/Ooooh, 6M hydrochloric! Glacial acetic! No gloves, no worries!

hahahaha... you'd appreciate this...

I was a chemical lab assistant when I was really young (16 years old)... lost my fingerprints to hydrochloric acid that I had to clean the flasks with (no gloves obviously, I was told I didn't need them). -Couldn't turn pages in my textbooks for weeks.

Tricky Chicken: I am probably wrong,

If you mis sulfuric acid with sugar, you get a big growing carbon marshmallow or something.

If you do the same with nitric acid you get nitro glycerine.

Naw, nitroglycerin you get when adding first sulfuric then nitric to fats containing a lot of glycerin. Boom!

A common demonstration used to be to drop a nickel or a penny into some concentrated nitric acid. You get nitrogen dioxide as a product, which is a noxious red-brown gas. Not good to breathe.

You can use hydrochloric or sulfuric acid to generate hydrogen gas by reaction with most metals, but you should dilute it first. If the teacher wanted to generate some hydrogen, you shouldn't use the concentrated stuff, but dropping some zinc or tin or some other cheaper metal into concentrated nitric acid would give you the same red-brown gas. Enough of that and you should leave.

I always tell my students, "if you can see the gas - RUN."

/Chemists do it in the fume hood

offmymeds: Nitric acid.

Could also be easily mistaken for a urine sample.

Quiet down you! Do you want Chinese putting nitric acid in our cokes?

Manfred J. Hattan: JackieRabbit: A little more detail would have killed them?

She added the sulfuric to sugar instead of the nitric.

Ah, a classic chemistry experiment: hydrolyzing sugar. Both sulphuric and nitric acid produce toxic fumes, which is why the experiment is conducted in a fume hood. This is a highly exothermic reaction and can explode if too much sugar and acid are involved. So safety dictates that the blast door be down. I'm betting this teacher has never actually taken a college chemistry course, but only a "teaching chemistry" course in some ed program.

I bet he was trying to make Copper Sulfate (Sulphate?) and added nitric acid, thus releasing NO2 (gas). That's not good, and it's just stupid.

Hey should know better

SomeTexan: Tricky Chicken: I am probably wrong,

If you mis sulfuric acid with sugar, you get a big growing carbon marshmallow or something.

If you do the same with nitric acid you get nitro glycerine.

Naw, nitroglycerin you get when adding first sulfuric then nitric to fats containing a lot of glycerin. Boom!

Also, kids: Don't try this at home! Boom!

AngryJailhouseFistfark: It's pronounced "dew-MAH."



Oui.

I'm a little rusty from college chemistry, but my guess it that it produced a bunch of Sulfur Dioxide - which smells awful in tiny doses 2ppm, but is actually pretty poisonous in larger concentrations >50ppm which they easily could have gotten if they quickly converted a bunch of concentrated sulfuric acid into a sulfur dioxide in a closed room.

not sure they needed to evacuate the block though - but that school is probably going to smell like rotten egg farts for a while.

SomeTexan: SomeTexan: Tricky Chicken: I am probably wrong,

If you mis sulfuric acid with sugar, you get a big growing carbon marshmallow or something.

If you do the same with nitric acid you get nitro glycerine.

Naw, nitroglycerin you get when adding first sulfuric then nitric to fats containing a lot of glycerin. Boom!

Also, kids: Don't try this at home! Boom!

Also, kids Don't try this at home! Go to a friends house!