On most days, Chemistry is one of my easier classes. The labs take hardly any time at all and my partner and I get it done really quickly and we even get good grades. Wednesday was not one of those days.
We had a lab that day, and Jessica and I were partners as usual. Except this lab didn't go quite as smoothly.
First, we had to mix hydrochloric acid with something else and then observe what happens. This would have gone smoothly, except for the fact that Jessica got it on her hands and had a minor heart attack, thinking her skin was going to fall off.
Then we had to mix hydrogen peroxide and some black powder. I told her not to pour the hydrogen peroxide into a beaker, because it was dirty, and she does it anyway. Then she asks me to turn on the water so she can rinse it out. When I turned it on, the water came out really fast so as soon as she stuck the beaker under the faucet, it sprayed all over my face.
And of course the teacher chooses that exact moment to walk by. And see everything.
And this is the face he makes:
Then we had to light stuff on fire, which is never a good idea. She went to turn the gas on for the burner and hit her head on the top of the cabinet.
When she had finally got it lit and was trying to turn it off, she almost lit her sleeve on fire.
After this, we only had 3 more stations to go to. What could happen within the time period of 15 minutes? Nothing. WRONG!!
We. Almost. Died.
When you light magnesium on fire, it burns hella bright. Like the sun, except concentrated into one little place. And it's white. And for this lab, we have to light a piece of magnesium on fire. So she lights the burner and while she does this, she hands me the piece of magnesium, which she was holding, so that she could light it. Well I took this to mean, "here, you get to light it on fire", which was stupid because usually she does all the experiments and I just tell her what the instructions mean. So as soon as she puts the match down, I put the magnesium in the flame just in time to hear her say, "don't light that yet". And it blew up. Most of the time, you can tell when to look away (which the instructions say to do) because it turns blue or green before it bursts into a miniature sun. But ours didn't. It just started out a really intense white. We went blind for 4 seconds, I am pretty sure. We saw the light, and we may have even crossed over to the other side for a few seconds.
And while this was burning, she had picked up the glass dish that was supposed to hold the burnt piece of magnesium after you got done with it. So I am waving it around while I am temporarily blind, trying to find the glass dish to put it on. She realized she was holding it and in an attempt not to get burned, she threw it on the table. And I was waving the mini sun around, trying to find the glass plate and trying not to kill anyone and I somehow managed to make it onto the glass. Without killing anyone.
Moral of the story, Michelle Obama will probably soon ban chemistry, like she banned peanut butter.
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