A little something to read and laugh
Dec. 3rd, 2008 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xansYet another story out of my cousin John recently, same old style, but not the usual subject...
Yesterday we were celebrating Thanksgiving with a family from our church. I don’t recall how the topic came up, but somehow I found myself talking about my childhood, specifically the story you’re about to read. Thinking about it was so fun I decided to write this story. No, this is not my typical story about my zany adventures at work; this is a story about being a juvenile delinquent.
So there I was…
…Sitting in my sixth grade science class listening to Mr. Brannon, my teacher, wax eloquently about the structure of atoms. This was my first foray into nuclear science, and I was fascinated. I sat transfixed as he described the way protons, neutrons, and electrons interact with each other and bond to form atoms. Right then and there I decided to be a nuclear physicist. Of course, that didn’t last once I learned my brain doesn’t wrap itself around differential equations and other types of math that doesn’t even involve numbers, but that’s not the point of the story.
It got even better when Mr. Brannon explained the process of electrolysis, where electrical current is run through water to break apart the hydrogen and oxygen molecules. He demonstrated it by running current through a beaker full of water, and we could all see the tiny gas bubbles forming on the electrodes.
I said to myself, “Self,” (that’s what I call myself), “We have an easy, cheap way of obtaining two pure, highly flammable gasses. Now what can we do with that?”
Imagine, if you will, the metaphorical light bulb over my head pulsating with sheer delight when I came up with the idea. I rushed home after school and went right into the garage, not even bothering to drop my backpack in the house. I got a five-gallon bucket, filled it with water, and brought it back into the garage. In hindsight twenty years later, I think maybe doing this in the garage wasn’t a good idea, but that’s neither here nor there.
Once I had a bucket of water, I stole some wire coat hangers from in the house and cut the straight bottoms off them. That way I had two straight wires about a foot long each. I set those aside. I dug out dad’s car battery charger and set it up next to the bucket, then put the wires into the alligator clips. I stuck the alligator clips into the water and made sure they didn’t touch – I wanted the current going through the water, not completing a circuit between the electrodes. My next step was to put a garbage bag over the bucket and tape it off with masking tape (I didn’t use the ol’ standby of duct tape because I didn’t want the bag to tear when I tore it off). Finally, I plugged in the battery charger.
Being merely twelve years old, I had the patience of a twelve year-old. I could barely contain myself waiting for the bag to fill up, which took almost a week if memory serves me. It felt like it took all year, though, and at times I wondered if I was going to be married and moved away before I had a garbage bag of 2/3 hydrogen and 1/3 oxygen.
In the meantime, however, I got a two-foot length of cannon fuse from a friend, James. You see, hobby shops at the time regularly sold cannon fuse. It wasn’t hard to come by, wasn’t controlled, and apparently no one assumed twelve year-olds buying cannon fuse were up to anything dangerous (don’t let your twelve year-olds read this, but it still holds true today. Just go to the black powder section of Sportsman’s Warehouse).
Ok, the longest week of my life (up until then) was over, and the bag was full of flammable gas. I couldn’t stop myself from giggling as I carefully pealed the masking tape off, then quickly closed the bag so as not to lose any of the precious material inside. I inserted the fuse so about twenty inches or so was sticking out the bottom, then taped the bag shut.
Essentially, I had just created a garbage bag-sized balloon that was lighter than air (due to being 2/3 hydrogen) and had a fuse for a handle. HOW AWESOME!!!
I hadn’t bothered to tell any of my friends about my little “science experiment,” for fear their sixth grade mouths would run and tell someone. I took my experiment outside by myself into the alley behind our garage, lit the fuse, and let go.
It was a beautiful thing to watch that brown garbage bag float higher and higher, anxiously awaiting the impending earth-shattering kaboom. I had planned for my own safety very well, however, by making the fuse so long – I didn’t want to be anywhere near that thing when it exploded. In the two minutes or so it took the fuse to burn down, the balloon floated so high I couldn’t even see it anymore. “Darn,” I said to myself, thinking it would be too far away to enjoy the benefits of my labor.
BOOOOOOMMM!!!! Came the report. I couldn’t actually see the bag anymore, but a big orange and blue ball of flame was all the evidence I needed to know where it was – er, had been. I doubt any fragments of the bag survived, and even if they did I never found them. About three seconds later, I think, I actually felt the shockwave push against my head and chest, and car alarms started going off throughout the neighborhood (those were a new thing in those days).
I was so giddy I actually started jumping up and down, laughing hysterically in a way that strangely reminds me of my two year-old son today. Every time he gets excited and starts laughing like that, I think of how grey my hair is going to be in about ten years.
DOOM ON ME!!!
Yesterday we were celebrating Thanksgiving with a family from our church. I don’t recall how the topic came up, but somehow I found myself talking about my childhood, specifically the story you’re about to read. Thinking about it was so fun I decided to write this story. No, this is not my typical story about my zany adventures at work; this is a story about being a juvenile delinquent.
So there I was…
…Sitting in my sixth grade science class listening to Mr. Brannon, my teacher, wax eloquently about the structure of atoms. This was my first foray into nuclear science, and I was fascinated. I sat transfixed as he described the way protons, neutrons, and electrons interact with each other and bond to form atoms. Right then and there I decided to be a nuclear physicist. Of course, that didn’t last once I learned my brain doesn’t wrap itself around differential equations and other types of math that doesn’t even involve numbers, but that’s not the point of the story.
It got even better when Mr. Brannon explained the process of electrolysis, where electrical current is run through water to break apart the hydrogen and oxygen molecules. He demonstrated it by running current through a beaker full of water, and we could all see the tiny gas bubbles forming on the electrodes.
I said to myself, “Self,” (that’s what I call myself), “We have an easy, cheap way of obtaining two pure, highly flammable gasses. Now what can we do with that?”
Imagine, if you will, the metaphorical light bulb over my head pulsating with sheer delight when I came up with the idea. I rushed home after school and went right into the garage, not even bothering to drop my backpack in the house. I got a five-gallon bucket, filled it with water, and brought it back into the garage. In hindsight twenty years later, I think maybe doing this in the garage wasn’t a good idea, but that’s neither here nor there.
Once I had a bucket of water, I stole some wire coat hangers from in the house and cut the straight bottoms off them. That way I had two straight wires about a foot long each. I set those aside. I dug out dad’s car battery charger and set it up next to the bucket, then put the wires into the alligator clips. I stuck the alligator clips into the water and made sure they didn’t touch – I wanted the current going through the water, not completing a circuit between the electrodes. My next step was to put a garbage bag over the bucket and tape it off with masking tape (I didn’t use the ol’ standby of duct tape because I didn’t want the bag to tear when I tore it off). Finally, I plugged in the battery charger.
Being merely twelve years old, I had the patience of a twelve year-old. I could barely contain myself waiting for the bag to fill up, which took almost a week if memory serves me. It felt like it took all year, though, and at times I wondered if I was going to be married and moved away before I had a garbage bag of 2/3 hydrogen and 1/3 oxygen.
In the meantime, however, I got a two-foot length of cannon fuse from a friend, James. You see, hobby shops at the time regularly sold cannon fuse. It wasn’t hard to come by, wasn’t controlled, and apparently no one assumed twelve year-olds buying cannon fuse were up to anything dangerous (don’t let your twelve year-olds read this, but it still holds true today. Just go to the black powder section of Sportsman’s Warehouse).
Ok, the longest week of my life (up until then) was over, and the bag was full of flammable gas. I couldn’t stop myself from giggling as I carefully pealed the masking tape off, then quickly closed the bag so as not to lose any of the precious material inside. I inserted the fuse so about twenty inches or so was sticking out the bottom, then taped the bag shut.
Essentially, I had just created a garbage bag-sized balloon that was lighter than air (due to being 2/3 hydrogen) and had a fuse for a handle. HOW AWESOME!!!
I hadn’t bothered to tell any of my friends about my little “science experiment,” for fear their sixth grade mouths would run and tell someone. I took my experiment outside by myself into the alley behind our garage, lit the fuse, and let go.
It was a beautiful thing to watch that brown garbage bag float higher and higher, anxiously awaiting the impending earth-shattering kaboom. I had planned for my own safety very well, however, by making the fuse so long – I didn’t want to be anywhere near that thing when it exploded. In the two minutes or so it took the fuse to burn down, the balloon floated so high I couldn’t even see it anymore. “Darn,” I said to myself, thinking it would be too far away to enjoy the benefits of my labor.
BOOOOOOMMM!!!! Came the report. I couldn’t actually see the bag anymore, but a big orange and blue ball of flame was all the evidence I needed to know where it was – er, had been. I doubt any fragments of the bag survived, and even if they did I never found them. About three seconds later, I think, I actually felt the shockwave push against my head and chest, and car alarms started going off throughout the neighborhood (those were a new thing in those days).
I was so giddy I actually started jumping up and down, laughing hysterically in a way that strangely reminds me of my two year-old son today. Every time he gets excited and starts laughing like that, I think of how grey my hair is going to be in about ten years.
DOOM ON ME!!!
