{"id":303,"date":"2009-10-04T19:12:07","date_gmt":"2009-10-04T19:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/10\/04\/on_school_days_part_iii\/"},"modified":"2009-10-04T19:12:07","modified_gmt":"2009-10-04T19:12:07","slug":"on_school_days_part_iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/10\/04\/on_school_days_part_iii\/","title":{"rendered":"On School days — Part III"},"content":{"rendered":"

You might be forgiven for thinking that Hogg was the only character in my high school chemistry class<\/a>. Indeed, sometimes I was forced to make my own entertainment: such as the time I poured a glass of water over the housemistress’ head. From two floors up. Or set fire\u2014but no. I’ll leave that one for later.<\/p>\n

\n\"\"
\nHigh school physics experiment<\/em><\/p>\n

\nThere was, in fact, a whole regiment of patsies that could be relied upon to relieve the routine of studying for ‘O’ Level. And some of them managed to do it from behind a wall or two…<\/p>\n

\nOne fine day we traipsed into the chemistry lab to be given a list of instructions, complete with boxes for us to write down our observations. It was meant to be some sort of test; and just so that there could be no cheating, the other top chemistry set was sitting it simultaneously.<\/p>\n

\nThe first task was to take a set amount of chalk, and heat it over a bunsen. Then we were to let the powder cool, weigh that, then transfer it to a watchglass and add water. Finally we had to measure the pH of the suspension and figure out what just happened. Something like that, anyway.<\/p>\n

\nWe had instructions. Clear<\/em> and and detailed instructions. We heated up the chalk. We (eventually) transferred the resulting powder to watch glass. We read the bit where the instructions said ‘holding it in your hand, add three drops of water’. And because we were doing this (all forty or so of us between two classes) simultaneously, the scream came at the precise moment we were dripping water onto the innocuous-looking powder in a watchglass.<\/p>\n

\nBecause some berk next door (and I know who it was was but I’m not going to embarrass him, on the off-chance he might track me down after 25 years) had taken the instructions too literally: tipped the powder directly into his hand and added water to that. The exothermic reaction alone must have hurt; the alkali burning a hole in his hand did the rest.<\/p>\n

\nCaO (s) + H2<\/sub>O (l) ⇔ Ca(OH)2<\/sub> (aq) (\u0394Hr<\/sub> = \u221263.7 kJ mol-1<\/sup>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You might be forgiven for thinking that Hogg was the only character in my high school chemistry class. Indeed, sometimes I was forced to make my own entertainment: such as the time I poured a glass of water over the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}