Childhood DIY experiments

[David]

After reading about all the stuff you used to do...I agree.

[PeterC]

only if it was the first day of the week.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Ah. I've been there. I think I know the exact spot..

[damduck-egg]

I was a bit of a sod, amongst the collection of gear my father had accumulated over the years were lamps of various voltages. These would have been used on the lighting generators of the farms around the area before the mains came..

24V was common and there were plenty left. The lamps were the standard bayonet and identical in size to 240V ones so with a china graph pencil a 0 added to 24 made them look identical. A lamp installed in a corridor at school which had more than lamp on the circuit caused havoc as the 24V filament was quite hefty and took out the circuit fuse rather than blow itself. It took the caretaker a while to sort things out and eventually he just changed every lamp on a circuit as matter of course.

G.Harman

[Al]

A kindred soul :)

Bless. Our caretaker was Charlie Sparrow. I have a feeling that it wasn't his real name, but it sort of fitted. Like Derek Guyler. His 'room' was downstairs from the 'Upper 6th' common room. I think he hated us all.

I sometimes look back on the utter stupidity that I inflicted on the world while I was at school and wonder if it was worth it. Yup. It was :)

Al.

[Al]

I've got a nagging doubt that I've still got a jar in the loft at my parents place.

Given to me by some irresponsible bugger. My mother's brother to be precise ;-)

To be fair, he was/is some sort of chemistry wizard.

Or maybe he was lying ... ;-)

Al.

[Jules]

I don't think you're allowed one any more - the H+S brigade have outlawed them...

[Jules]

Yes, I remember that sort of thing well from electronics classes, although we aimed them at the plasterboard walls in the lab.

I also cooked up a little oscillating device running from a 9V battery and through a step-up transformer, then invited folk to prod the contacts - I think the voltage it delivered was somewhere around 4KV.

Never did much with explosives, although I seem to remember half-baked experiments at turning cans of deodorant into rocket engines.

cheers

Jules

[nightjar]

Must have changed the A level syllabus - potssium cyanide (in a bright red bottle that we had to request from the lab technician) was an essential part of at least one experiment. We were requested, rather than instructed (it was probably more effective) not to dispose of cyanates down the sink, as the local water authority had complained.

I used to make a primitive nitrocellulose during chemistry practicals, which proved to be popular with my peers. Mind you, the girl next door, a couple of years older than me, had started experiments of her own with me at an early age, so I tended to have other interests than just blowing things up.

Colin Bignell

[Chris J Dixon]

It is alarming how lax general school lab safety standards were even when we were behaving. I remember the class doing preparation of chlorine from zinc and hydrochloric acid. The preparation was all done in the general lab, not fume cupboards, no safety glasses or even lab coats. At the end, everybody poured their excess materials down the drain, and lo! the reactions started up again in the sink, strongly enough for somebody to get a lungfull and have to visit casualty.

Chris

[Clint Sharp]

Sadly, I think you may be right. I may have to covertly encourage my kids to have one.

[Bob Martin]

Someone did that with a hired cruiser on the Norfolk Broads a few years ago.

[Chris J Dixon]

A boating acquaintance of mine reckons that bailing an accidental spill of butane can get some very strange looks.

Chris

[PeterC]

When we moved to this house about 40 years ago, there was the village hall next door but one. Not nice at weekends - disco, wooden floor etc. 'til gone midnight. My brother switched of the light in the entrance, slipped a disk of metal under the bulb and watched from a distance. Next person out switched on the light - with a single, ancient, fused supply...! Hall was never used again and was demolished about a year later :-))

[PeterC]

A .22 pellet through the side near 1 end gives an interesting display.

[Clint Sharp]

Even more so if there happens to be an ignition source nearby.

[dennis]

H&S bans are usually easy to get around.. just ask them for their training certificates to show that they know how to do H&S assessments. Then when they can't show them ask them why they think they are qualified to make a H&S assessment. All the stupid bans are done by people that don't have a clue and shouldn't be allowed to make an assessment at all. This includes the ones imposed by parents by not letting their kids out to play which are the most stupid bans I know of.

[Reentrant]

I saw an episode of Dixon of Dock Green where someone had been knocked out by "a blow to the back of the head". So when my sister next annoyed me I blew on the back of her head. It didn't work.

[dennis]

He didn't try a vac then?

[dennis]

I must have had a sheltered life.. I only ever blew one house fuse while I was at primary school. It was the company fuse though and that went with a rather large bang.

Interestingly enough I shouldn't have been able to do it by making an electro magnet using some copper wire and mechano (I think I might have needed more turns). I wasn't the one that had replaced the mains fuse with a nail but I still got the blame for it. There was a bill for about £35 which was a lot in the early '60s.