Honestly Officer it was just a complete accident................

Get blindfold, have little to no understanding of chemistry then start mixing!

I wonder what they were doing that this was a possibility.

Edit: looks like it's relatively simple to make. Not really sure what they were doing to accidently make it though.
If my kids chemistry set is anything to go by all that does is make smelly brown water. :(

And all I wanted to make was something that went bang. :(
 
Love your stories Diddums :D

The best one I had back in chemistry class was someone stealing a golf ball-sized lump of lithium. It was still in its jar, stored with a liquid (maybe oil?) to prevent the metal from reacting with the air. Then we went to the school's pond near the greenhouses and the guy chucked the whole lithium piece into the pond. Nothing for a few seconds, then BOOM, it went off like fireworks! It's the sort of stuff you'd easily find on Youtube nowadays, but sadly no affordable recording equipment existed back in 1993 :( The whole science class got given lunchtime detention though :p
 
What an utterly pointless and potentially disastrous news story.

It's a complete non-story. The main effect of this article is just to tell would be terrorists how easy it is to make bombs.

Like I needed to know that some chemist can put together a bomb. WOWZERS that's real ****ing news isn't it. At the same time a new batch of terrorists have been made aware of an avenue to get access to bombs. In fact mass media has been trying to get jihadis into universities for at least a year, anyone remember those jihadi universities they were advertising a year ago?
 
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The wording of the article, sucks. Calling something "routine" or "procedure" implies it went a bit wrong. If that were the case it's not routine, that's bad management and foresight.

If a student is given the substances to make an explosive, then really the only real procedure is how NOT to make that :p
 
What an utterly pointless and potentially disastrous news story.

It's a complete non-story. The main effect of this article is just to tell would be terrorists how easy it is to make bombs.

Like I needed to know that some chemist can put together a bomb. WOWZERS that's real ****ing news isn't it. At the same time a new batch of terrorists have been made aware of an avenue to get access to bombs. In fact mass media has been trying to get jihadis into universities for at least a year, anyone remember those jihadi universities they were advertising a year ago?

:rolleyes: People radicalised enough to want to start a bombing campaign don't need a BBC article to tell them how and where to cook up explosives, they have plenty of other far more advanced website avenues for that task.
 
People used to go mad stealing the rolls of magnesium at my school but I don't remember anything much more explosive than that from a pupil.

The dangerous stuff was always done by my Chemistry teacher, a twee Scottish man who stank of drink and I have no doubt was drunk sometimes when teaching us. The most memorable thing he did was made an incendiary compound to the same recipe of the bombs the allies dropped on Dresden during WWII.

I have no idea if he had done this before in previous years or this was the first go. Either way it was hard to say who was more shocked, us or him. The compound was placed inside a clay ball with a lid and a fuse. There was a small glass screen set around it and we stood back. Upon ignition we were all expecting a flame to shoot out a couple of feet. Instead a roaring flame went up and spread across the ceiling a good 8 feet with a ferocious intensity and heat.

The ceiling was suitably charred and remained that way until I left after my GCSEs. It was one of the best days of my school life.
 
What an utterly pointless and potentially disastrous news story.

It's a complete non-story. The main effect of this article is just to tell would be terrorists how easy it is to make bombs.

Like I needed to know that some chemist can put together a bomb. WOWZERS that's real ****ing news isn't it. At the same time a new batch of terrorists have been made aware of an avenue to get access to bombs. In fact mass media has been trying to get jihadis into universities for at least a year, anyone remember those jihadi universities they were advertising a year ago?

LOLWUT?

You can watch a film or tv series that will educate you on the fact that a uni student with half a brain and a lab can knock up pretty much anything you need for general low tech booms or indeed just use a little brain power.

If someone hell bent on a bit of terror needed a BBC article for the penny to drop then I think we're safe as they probably also struggle to wipe their backside without help.
 
I really can't remember! The most exciting thing I could make was copper sulphate crystals. :(

Can you even get proper chemistry kits for children any more? I would have thought they'd have been long since Health and Safety'd down to three pieces of litmus paper and a small tube of tartaric acid.
 
I really can't remember! The most exciting thing I could make was copper sulphate crystals. :(
Aww man that brings back some awesome memories. I got one with a load of chemicals and a bunsen burner that you filled with methylated spirits. First thing i did was mix every chemical together and heat it on the bunsen burner to see what would happen. Smelly brown water was indeed the result :(.
 
Aww man that brings back some awesome memories. I got one with a load of chemicals and a bunsen burner that you filled with methylated spirits. First thing i did was mix every chemical together and heat it on the bunsen burner to see what would happen. Smelly brown water was indeed the result :(.

Isn't that actually the way they brew Carling? You accidentally brewed Carling, a substance listed by the UN as prohibited and toxic, I'm reporting you to António Guterres.
 
I remember getting a chemistry set for Christmas after bugging my parents for one for years and them faking notes from Santa with reasons why I couldn't have one.

I promptly prepared a mix which when heated with the meths burns exploded all over the kitchen wallpaper, I never did figure out their real reason for not wanting to let me have one :D
 
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