Because humor is funnier when you know it's true.
Teen science
Why wait for school-required science projects when you can do your own experiments, at home, and with more exciting results. At least this was my philosophy, and that of my friend, Jim. It’s amazing how much science a kid can really learn when he has powerful incentives like making rockets, or explosions.
It all started with a couple of Gilbert chemistry sets we each received for Christmas. Our first quest? Find the formula for gunpowder. With a little research, we determined that our newly acquired chemical inventories had two of the key ingredients (which shall remain unnamed). The third component, powdered carbon, was easy enough to get. We just needed to grind up some charcoal briquettes that all parents had for backyard grills back in the day. Following this recipe, we made multiple batches with the dream of creating our own fireworks. The reality was that we never achieved the kinds of dramatic blasts we were seeking. Our gunpowder created more flash than bang.
Then we realized that our ‘flashy’ formula could be used instead for rocket fuel! We built a rocket body, loaded it with our gunpowder, and attached bare wires from an old lamp cord to serve as an ignition system. We put live ants in the nose cone to serve as astronauts. After a countdown, we plugged in the wire and watched the rocket successfully ignite and immediately zoom straight up from Jim’s launching pad. Unbelievable! Almost as immediately, Jim’s father came running out of the house screaming, “What the hell did you kids do? All of the power in the house just went out!” We had blown an electrical fuse, and apparently his father’s fuse too.
After all of this experimentation, we eventually depleted our chemistry sets’ inventory of the needed chemicals and were forced to cease gunpowder production. But I found an alternative. Apparently match heads packed tightly into a container can do the same thing! I enthusiastically started snipping off the heads from book matches. I packed them all into a small jar, punched a hole in the cap, and inserted a makeshift fuse in the top. I didn’t want to draw any attention, so I took my little creation to a testing ground deep in the woods. I lit the fuse, waited, and ta da, it exploded with a sharp “Bang!” I couldn’t believe it actually worked. A few seconds later, I also couldn’t believe all of the fires those flaming match heads had started in the dry leaves around me. I was panicked.