In the Name of Science: Unnecessary Experiments

[Shahil]

What is the most interesting but unnecessary experiment you have done in the name of science?

I'm not asking for things that actually do some good for the world (like discover penicillin or something) but things that are really "stupid" to be taken seriously as proper experiments but things you did just for the sake of your enquiring mind?

 

[Artman]

One of the most stupid experiments I have done is to boil water in a paper cup, sitting in a dry pan on an electric stove. I was just a kid, about 9 years old. I had not heard about this experiment before, I was just curious to see what would happen to the cup.

The water boiled and the cup was fine (it did not burn), the stupid part came when I set the hot pan on the kitchen table. It left a nice round, dark, black burn mark on the table! I quickly set the table careful to place a dish exactly over the mark. It was discovered almost immediately, of course.

Next to this were my experiments with hot air ballons using dry cleaner bags and a can of flaming gasoline. (the darn thing worked for a second then melted through and nearly caught my parents yard on fire.

 

[BoulderHead]

Outing cigarettes in a cup of gasoline, lol.

 

[KLscilevothma]

Droped several drops of silver nitrate solution on my hands intentionally to see how long the brown stain would gone.

 

[Monique]

I made rockets out of teabags..

 

[The Bob]

I basically blow anything up with petrol, meths or potassium permangange and glyerin.

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I just wrote out one thing I did but I had better not. In this day and age playing with explosives ist verboten! DARN! I will only say this: lots of HCL and Al.

When I was very young I once glued my dads ladder in the closed position with industrial strength epoxy.

I knew a guy that wanted to dispose of a bag of gun powder. He stuck it in the fireplace and lit the bag. All of the hair on the front of his head - eyelashes, eyebrows, nose hairs, and the hair around his forehead was gone in a flash. He had to lie on the bed with his nose draining into a pan since the burns prevented any blowing.

This is the same guy that tried masterbating with Ben Gay; and then told everyone!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I made rockets out of teabags..

huh?

 

[Monique]

Same as you: I wrote it out but better not, playing with fire is verboden too :) Ah well, basically, if you remove the string and the .. iron thingie and empty the teabag, stand the thing upright and light the top of the cone, it will slowly burn up and start taking off into the air! Don't do it inside because your kitchen will be covered in teabag ashes.

 

[The Bob]

Oh come on people. I do these things in controlled conditions (my friend is next ot me with a fire bucket ). No but seriously when I do it there is no danger. We all know the rules on fire and the precautions we have to take. We know what we are doing.

Werum ist es verboten?

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[Monique]

Waarom is het verboden? Omdat het niet mag.

 

[The Bob]

Waarom is het verboden? Omdat het niet mag.

Sorry I do not speak erm... is it Dutch? I really do not know what language it is but I think you (Monique) are from Holland because I rememeber a conversation about Holland in Euro 2004 and you wanted them to win. The only word I recognise is 'mag' to mean 'to like'. I think you are going to have to teach me Dutch.

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[Artman]

Same as you: I wrote it out but better not, playing with fire is verboden too :) Ah well, basically, if you remove the string and the .. iron thingie and empty the teabag, stand the thing upright and light the top of the cone, it will slowly burn up and start taking off into the air! Don't do it inside because your kitchen will be covered in teabag ashes.

Your tea bags must be different from ours in the USA. With a USA type tea bag, I don't see this working. Darn it, I know I want to try it! (I promise to take it outside first.)

 

[The Bob]

Your tea bags must be different from ours in the USA. With a USA type tea bag, I don't see this working. Darn it, I know I want to try it! (I promise to take it outside first.)

I think English tea bags are the same.

I still want to know why writing that fire is good is verboten?

I think i have translated:

Waarom is het verboden? Omdat het niet mag.

Why is it forbidden? Because it cannot. Why cannot it not ?

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[Hurkyl]

I can't say I've done it myself, but circulating http://www.circus.com/~no_dhmo/ is a nifty experiment.

 

[Gokul43201]

I can't say I've done it myself, but circulating http://www.circus.com/~no_dhmo/ is a nifty experiment.

That was really funny.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

yes, very good. I already sent it to several friends.

 

[Janitor]

This goes back to when I was about eight...

Women used to use things called 'bobby pins' in their hair. A bobby pin was a thin strip of metal bent in half, such that the free ends were near one another. My mom had some sitting around the house. I bent one enough to get the ends to go into an electrical socket, to satisfy my budding curiosity about 'lectricity. The breaker out in the back yard was tripped by the sudden surge of current through the pin, but not before the current heated the pin up to a high enough temperature to leave blisters on my thumb and forefinger.

 

[Miles]

There was the time my brother and his friend made a potato canon. It was a long pieace of PVC piping about 3 in diametar and 5 ft long, attached to a shorter pieace of PVC piping about 6 in diametar and 1 foot long. They had a screw lid for the short pieace of PVC pipe and a .5 in hole drilled into the side of the peace of pipe.

What you do is put the potato at the end of the long pieace and push it down a couple of feet with the end of a broom handle. Then sprey in some Aerosol hairspray into the larger chamber, screw on the lid, and stick a long BBQ lighter into the hole you drilled, click it a couple of times and BOOM! Your Potato goes flying a several hundred feet.

Careful not to aim it at anyone cause they could get realllly hurt.