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The Experiment
A Thursday Prompt story
© 2025 by Walter Reimer
Prompt: mixture
This has the benefit of being a true story, so buckle up.
Many decades ago, when dinosaurs trod the ground I took a college course in organic chemistry. One of the great things about organic chemistry is that, with a backbone of carbon atoms, it’s easy to craft molecules to certain specifications. Just ask McDonald’s where they get their ‘special sauce.’
What’s required is a reagent and a catalyst, such as a heat source, and hereby hangs my tale.
The experiment for the day was to nitrate benzene. The required apparatus was a reaction flask, a condenser, and a stopper equipped with a thermometer. The flask was supposed to sit comfortably in a cup-shaped electric heating element. There weren’t enough of these heating jackets to go around, so some of the students were using Bunsen burners connected to the natural gas pipes in the laboratory.
I got everything I needed, including the two reagents. This brings me to the bad thing about organic chemistry: many of the chemicals you’ll be using can either explode, catch fire, poison you, give you cancer, or all the above, so due care must be exercised.
Into the reaction flask I poured a carefully measured amount of benzene, an even more carefully measured amount of nitric acid, sealed up the apparatus, made sure that cold water was running through the condenser, checked the temperature and began to apply heat.
The aim of this experiment was to use the heat to clip a hydrogen atom off the benzene molecule, stick on a single nitrate ion, and produce hydrogen gas and nitrobenzene.
I’m carefully watching the reaction as I’m supposed to do when I see the air in the flask turning brick red. Even I know that wasn’t supposed to happen, and a look at the other students’ efforts showed that, yes, something was going wrong.
I called my professor over and he looked at it. In a quiet voice he told me to shut off the heating element, carefully carry the entire apparatus over to the smoke hood, turn on the fans, and carefully dismantle the reaction column.
To this day, I’m not certain what happened. Either I had sealed the apparatus too well, causing pressure to increase, or despite watching the temperature rose too high, but it was determined that I hadn’t been brewing nitrobenzene – I’d been making trinitrobenzene, which isn’t as explosive as TNT but still damned nasty.
And with all the open gas lines in the lab, I still refer to this incident as “The Day I Nearly Blew Up the Lab.”
As a historical footnote, I did pass the organic chemistry class.
end
A Thursday Prompt story
© 2025 by Walter Reimer
Prompt: mixture
This has the benefit of being a true story, so buckle up.
Many decades ago, when dinosaurs trod the ground I took a college course in organic chemistry. One of the great things about organic chemistry is that, with a backbone of carbon atoms, it’s easy to craft molecules to certain specifications. Just ask McDonald’s where they get their ‘special sauce.’
What’s required is a reagent and a catalyst, such as a heat source, and hereby hangs my tale.
The experiment for the day was to nitrate benzene. The required apparatus was a reaction flask, a condenser, and a stopper equipped with a thermometer. The flask was supposed to sit comfortably in a cup-shaped electric heating element. There weren’t enough of these heating jackets to go around, so some of the students were using Bunsen burners connected to the natural gas pipes in the laboratory.
I got everything I needed, including the two reagents. This brings me to the bad thing about organic chemistry: many of the chemicals you’ll be using can either explode, catch fire, poison you, give you cancer, or all the above, so due care must be exercised.
Into the reaction flask I poured a carefully measured amount of benzene, an even more carefully measured amount of nitric acid, sealed up the apparatus, made sure that cold water was running through the condenser, checked the temperature and began to apply heat.
The aim of this experiment was to use the heat to clip a hydrogen atom off the benzene molecule, stick on a single nitrate ion, and produce hydrogen gas and nitrobenzene.
I’m carefully watching the reaction as I’m supposed to do when I see the air in the flask turning brick red. Even I know that wasn’t supposed to happen, and a look at the other students’ efforts showed that, yes, something was going wrong.
I called my professor over and he looked at it. In a quiet voice he told me to shut off the heating element, carefully carry the entire apparatus over to the smoke hood, turn on the fans, and carefully dismantle the reaction column.
To this day, I’m not certain what happened. Either I had sealed the apparatus too well, causing pressure to increase, or despite watching the temperature rose too high, but it was determined that I hadn’t been brewing nitrobenzene – I’d been making trinitrobenzene, which isn’t as explosive as TNT but still damned nasty.
And with all the open gas lines in the lab, I still refer to this incident as “The Day I Nearly Blew Up the Lab.”
As a historical footnote, I did pass the organic chemistry class.
end
Category Story / Human
Species Human
Size 120 x 92px
File Size 51.9 kB
Listed in Folders
*chuckles* I mentioned it last week to MarmelMM; these kind of memory stories are some of the best to read! >^_^< I absolutely love them, and it even made me think back to the time even before dinosaurs trod the ground, the time when the planet was just beginning to cool off and form a crust, which was about when I was of the age that I still went to school and had chemistry class, and remember some of the funny things that happened there - fortunately, indeed merely funny and never really dangerous >~_^<
This was also darn funny though! And a good story to tell at parties!
This was also darn funny though! And a good story to tell at parties!
I studied mathematics and electromagnetism in university, so I had to take only one course of organic chemistry, and no lab courses of chemistry at all. I don't have mind for chemistry, too many little tiny details. In EM, you just take Maxwell's equations and shake them about and eventually get what you need. No need to remember a lot of stuff by heart. In any case, the more chemistry-minded people talked a lot about all sorts of interesting experiments, like creating explosives that would explode by just touch. Somebody was also expelled because they made drugs in the university laboratory. Fun times.
In any case, had fun reading this. It is a sobering moment when the professor has the "oh shit" face.
Very nice little read. Enjoyed it very much.
In any case, had fun reading this. It is a sobering moment when the professor has the "oh shit" face.
Very nice little read. Enjoyed it very much.
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