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Asked by Harry C on 3 Jul 2024.
Question: What was your favorite practical that you did when you was in school?
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Stephen Miller answered on 3 Jul 2024:
Physics and Woodwork – from physics I learned how the world works and from woodwork I generated a love of making things – I now have a big workshop in a shed in my garden where I make wooden puzzle boxes.
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Will Breeze answered on 3 Jul 2024:
Probably flame testing. Where you dip a wire in a salt and then hold it in a Bunsen burner flame. You can then see what colour the flame changes to work out what kind of salt it is.
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Georgia Brittain answered on 3 Jul 2024: last edited 3 Jul 2024 10:50 am
Two experiments from school still stick in my mind to this day.
One was from my first year in my Chemistry degree and was an oscillating clock reaction, known as the Briggs-Rauscher Reaction. Three colourless solutions are combined into a large beaker and the mixture becomes amber, then blue-black, and then colourless again. This sequence of colour changes will repeat for approximately 15 seconds at 25 C. The reaction lasts about 5 minutes without needing to touch or do anything else as it oscillates through these different colours.
The second one is from secondary school and was an experiment we were allowed to demonstrate on open evenings called The Screaming Jelly Baby.
https://edu.rsc.org/exhibition-chemistry/the-screaming-jelly-baby/4012799.article
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Amber Villegas - Williamson answered on 3 Jul 2024:
I think my favourite practical was many years ago when I was in junior school and we looked at the damage that smoking does to your lungs, it was so disgusting and gross that I have never smoked in my whole life.
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David Bremner answered on 4 Jul 2024:
We got to make cheese sandwiches and then use them to burn in the flame of a bunsen burner under a beaker of water to see if we could get a temperature change in the water by burning the sandwiches to show how much energy can be released from food. Then if there were any sandwiches left we got to eat them!
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Ruth Pegington answered on 5 Jul 2024:
Sounds gruesome, but I was fascinated with dissection of animals. I remember vividly examining the intestines and dissecting the parts of an eyeball and using the lens to magnify words written on a page. I think I’d probably like to be a surgeon in another life!
Other than that, putting different alkali metals such as sodium and lithium into water and watching them dance on the surface of the water,bursting into flames of different colours. It made me mindful whilst using sodium metal as a chemist later in life. -
Hannah Scholes answered on 11 Jul 2024: last edited 11 Jul 2024 9:02 pm
There were loads of different practicals which I remember, but my favourites have to be exploding custard
and making elephant toothpaste
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