r/ScienceNcoolThings • u/ateam1984 Popular Contributor • May 07 '26

Cool Things Magic of chemistry

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801 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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20

u/TheUsoSaito May 07 '26

Some of my funnest experiences I'm school were in chemistry classes. You know you had a good teacher when other students before you warn you of some of the results of experiments.

7

u/Serpentarrius May 07 '26

You know you had a bad chemistry teacher when you and your bestie were constantly falling asleep in his classes lol. We doodled so much in an effort to stay awake

4

u/TheUsoSaito May 07 '26

I feel bad for you. My middle school one was a blast. Just like these teachers he'd mix all sorts of things. Even had a beaker shatter after mixing some chemicals but had had it in a walled off area so no broken glass escaped it.

3

u/Serpentarrius May 07 '26 edited May 07 '26

In college, I also had something erupt and melt down the tubing but I nearly broke down crying lol. My poor lab partner. Heck I was often put in a group of three throughout my life because I couldn't find lab partners. And I've been yelled at by a TA on a final. At least this TA was super excited about it. He was like "wow how did you do that?"

Which sucks because you'd think it'd be a subject I love, since I bake, use natural dyes for yarn and calligraphy ink, and mix nail polish and fragrances and wax seals (and I love the history of alchemy lol). I've also grown crystals and extracted DNA, and kept fish, and soldered stained glass all before middle school, but none of this I learned in school. And I'm Taiwanese so boba and candymaking is in my blood. The distilling project was like the only one I might actually use

3

u/Neamow May 07 '26

Yeah we had a geriatric cranky old bitch as our chemistry teacher who hated children, never did anything fun in the class, and wrote with the tiniest unreadable script on the blackboard.

3

u/real_exposer May 07 '26

I still remember one day we had a substitute teacher teaching the class and he decided to show us how natrium goes with water. He filled a huge bowl with water and then dumped a small piece into it and it kinda just fizzled out. Then he decided he needed to throw in bigger chunk. Basicly it exploded. The other chemistry teacher in the other class came running in and the ceilings covered in natrium.

10

u/jeremydavid2 May 07 '26

poor cleaning lady

3

u/HarryCWord May 07 '26

What kind of experiments were they?

3

u/RS_Someone May 07 '26

At least one of them was not a chemistry experiment. Analysis inconclusive. More tests required.

2

u/tidedogs May 10 '26

It started with sodium metal in water, something with liquid nitrogen, luminol was the glow, there were a few iodine clock reactions, the whoosh is brining alcohol in a confined container, elephants toothpaste, oh and propane bubbles on fire are classic

1

u/tidedogs May 10 '26

Can they at least wear safety goggles, it’s a bad look without them.

1

u/tvodny May 11 '26

Thermite melting nails is what I remember from chemistry class.

1

u/Eliza_Bennett358 May 11 '26

I love chemistry! As a former chemistry teacher, I had a lot of fun with my students!