Very good story !
Let's see if mine qualifies for this thread ....
When I was much younger (around 15 years old), I was quite interested in chemistry. And my uncle (only 7 years older...more of a big brother...) was studying to become chemistry professor.
On a beautiful day, during summer holidays, we decided to make a few cc of nitroglycerine, just for the fun of it ..
don't ask me the formula, I don't remember. I guess you can find it in any chemistry book.
I just remember it involded some warm acid.
We were well into the fabrication process, right where things were beginning to be ...critical, slowly pouring some product (glycerine ?) into the warm acid (or maybe the opposite .. ? <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> ), when a huge BOUM !! happend ... somewhere not far away.. but not us hopefully...
The acid's temperature or something else was wrong and we did not succeed to make a single drop of nitroglycerine.
And we didn't try again : maybe that explosion in the area imparted some wisdom to our thoughtless brains...
<img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
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Alain