Chemical exploits

Every science stream student, pure or otherwise, cannot possibly get his or her Sijil Berhenti Sekolah without blowing up the chem lab at least once. For those of you too old to remember, Science streams now comes in Pure and, uh, Impure. I forgot the name, will edit it in later when I remember or when someone tells me what it's called. Anyway, today I'll talk about my embarassing exploits while dealing with dangerous chemicals.

So...let's start with the real post now.

You know those spiffy white coats and the eye-protector thingies we're supposed to wear when we're in the chem lab? Forget about those. It's a fantasy, like we're supposed to be wearing protective headgear and be sober while wielding rusty mallets in the bengkel Kemahiran Hidup. It only exists in textbooks and private schools. My alma mater was an el-cheapo government-funded school with gangfights every other Friday (people in the Pandan area would recognise the name Gangster School), so I guess we were pretty lucky to have a chem lab at all.

One fine day while I was in Form 4, we were lining up outside the lab waiting. Now that I think about it, I have no idea why they make us stand outside when the teacher's already in. I mean, god forbid if anyone ever tried to explain the sense of it all to us.

That day, we were supposed to be doing some sort of experiment listed in the book, and if memory serves we were supposed to heat up some magnesium tape in a little ceramic bowl. We had six tables in the lab, so about 8 of us were assigned to each table. We gathered the necessary apparatus and happily began assembling the Bunsen Burner. As with all chemical stuff, the trick of this experiment is the bowl must not touch direct flame, so you had to hover it on top of the Bunsen burner and move your hand (that's holding the tongs that're gripping the bowl) around.

Because we didn't have enough tongs, some of us had to heat it holding the ceramic bowl itself. Obviously this needed some tricky maneuvering so you don't heat up your fingers in the process, so the guys, who're naturally more limber and lithe than us clumsy girls, had to relinquish the tongs. Not a peep about sexism out of y'all please, thanks.

After about 3 minutes of hovering, I got bored. Ever notice how kids are usually subdued and zen-like before lunch and crazy and jumping around after lunch? I think they do it on purpose and time chem periods right after lunch so that kids will start thinking about some wacky experiments to do with all those tempting bottles of chemicals lying around, just so they can send more kids to the principal's room.

So what I did after feeling bored was let go of the tongs and placed the bowl right on the burner. Now from this action you know 2 things. First, that I never pay attention during McGyver or I would've known that magnesium + fire = not good in a confined space. Two, that I never paid any attention in chem class, otherwise I would've known that magnesium + fire = not good in a confined space.

It wouldn't have been so bad if I'd been the only one to do that, but one by one my friends from the other tables started putting down their ceramic bowls on the burner as well. From this, you know that no one in my class watches McGyver and/or pays attention during chem class. You would also be able to make an educated guess that out of a class of 40+ students, maybe 2 or 3 manage to get into double digits in their ujian bulanan.

Now, because the magnesium has been heating up while we were happily chatting away, eventually the one in my bowl started to spit black stuff. No one gave it any notice except for the class nerd (which is most definitely NOT me), and she started to look in the textbook to see if the magnesium was supposed to do that. While she was looking, suddenly all the bowls in the lab starting spitting too, and everyone was distancing themselves from the table cos they didn't want to get any of the tar-like substance on their clothes, especially the girls in baju kurungs. Now that I know how to cook, I know that whenever something doesn't look right the first thing you do is turn the fire off.

I did not how to cook back then.

While we were watching, white acrid smoke started pouring out of the ceramic bowl right before our very eyes. Honestly, for a small piece of tape like that, you'd think it would be easy to handle, but boy you'd be wrong. The smoke seemed to be endless, and at this point the teacher woke up from her slumber cos it really was very bad. She was kinda angry and spitting herself, but then I guess a lab full of smoke is not really a welcoming sight to wake up to.

In short, the lab was evacuated and the school gardener (who doubles as lab assistant, apparently) went into the lab with his lidi broom. I have no idea what he did in there, but lab classes were cancelled the whole day. I didn't get into trouble either, cos technically it wasn't my fault if I never verbally instigated anything. The downside was the teacher never slept in our chem class anymore.

The end.

You'd realise that this entry isn't very embarassing, considering. Because of my itchy hands, I've pasted a code thingy that tracks links to my site, and I found out that today my site got 130+ hits. To your everyday celebrity like Uncle Buaya or Kim, that might not be a lot, but it kinda freaks me out that 130+ people know that my cousin brother called me up to ask about bjs. Previously I thought at most 20 people read what I write.

So no more of the really embarassing stuff until I get used to this number.

Scribbles:
Sijil Berhenti Sekolah: The cert you get to certify you've never been expelled during your years in secondary school.
Bengkel Kemahiran Hidup: The place where they keep rusty saws and mallets for students to build cassette holders. Yes, cassettes were still in fashion back then. Official translation is Life Sciences workshop.
Pandan area: the place where my secondary school is located.
ujian bulanan: directly translated, monthly exams. Funnily enough, our exams were held once every 3 months, so it was 1st monthly exam, followed by mid sem exams, followed by 3rd monthly test and finally the final exam.

Science streams in Malaysia are categorised under Pure Science, which means the student takes Add Maths, Chemistry, Physics and Biology, and the other Science stream means you take a combination of science and arts subjects.