MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Central High School basketball player was treated at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital last week after he was burned during a science experiment gone wrong.
Tije’a Wilks was being recorded by another student mixing chemicals and then lighting them when they suddenly burst into flames. You can see his chemistry teacher standing beside him when it happened.
“The teacher had a pastry bowl on the ground, which consisted of potassium, citrate, zinc, and sulfur,” said Andria Wilks. “Once he did strike, instead of it being a ball of smoke, it was a ball of fire.”
I'm delighted that the teacher was having his kids to a relatively fun chemistry experiment (looks like it should have been potassium chlorate as the oxidizer), but very concerned that they were clearly inadequately protected from my brief viewing of the video. Best wishes to the victim and the family.
Years ago, I was trying to develop different variations of the "Screaming Gummy Bear" demo (molten KClO3 with sugar) and was surprised when a mixture of KClO3 with powdered sulfur burst into flames while crushing the KClO3 granules with a spatula. A quick Google search shows that that mixture is well known to be shock and friction sensitive but I was working in the early days of the internet, so please don't judge me too harshly. It also flashes much faster than the KClO3 + sugar mixture. From this video, it looks like instead of the KClO3 just being a fuse, some of it must have gotten stirred in with the zinc/sulfur mixture. If I were going to do this demo, I might try using a magnesium strip or KMnO4 + glycerol as the fuse (similar to thermite demo fuses - which I also haven't done in years), since that gives time to light it and step away, but burns hot enough to ignite the zinc/sulfur mixture.
ReplyDelete