In the old days was it Napthalene?
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Yes. Now considered a carcinogen. Used to be able to buy bags of mothballs from the local chemist when I was younger. I always rather liked the smell! Ignorance is bliss!
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I remember it as crystals in chemistry at school, did we burn them for some reaction?
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That rings a bell.
Yes, quite nasty stiff which was banned by the EU. The various replacements still used are less nasty, but still need to be used with care. I guess if they were completely safe they wouldn’t kill moths!
Major emergence this evening, in the last half hour I’ve despatched a dozen of the little bar stewards in the lounge.
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Naphthalene is flammable certainly. But when heated it sublimes, ie. changes directly into a gaseous state rather than a liquid first. IIRC it was used in chemistry at school to demonstrate the phenomenon of sublimation.
We used many hazardous things in school chemistry and physics in those days. Benzene, a carcinogen, concentrated acids and alkalis, bromine, various radioctive sources. Makes me cringe when I think about it now.
Does anyone with kids know if these things are banned in schools now?
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I remember little balls of mercury rolling around the table, various things being burnt, and flammable liquid being heated to quite high temperatures in physics lessons with quite spectacular unintended consequences. If nothing else this certainly contravenes the Health and Safety at Work Act, and I’m sure would not be done today.
My daughter did A Level chemistry about 15 years ago and nearly everything was classroom based, not lab based. Practical experience, even of safer chemicals, seemed to be pretty limited.
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Chucking a lump phosphorus into a tub of water to see it explode was great fun in chemistry no protective eye wear.
Opening up the Bunsen burner gas tap on the desk and getting a flame flare across the desk.
The chemistry teacher would ask if anyone wanted to see if their jewellery was actually gold - he’d drop the item in a beaker of nitric acid. Anything cheap would fizzle up.
The teacher told us of a colleague that would come and ask for a drop of sulphuric acid in his glass of water just to give it a bit of a buzz.
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I spent quite a time trying to remember that.
Just about everything was on hand, acids, mercury, sodium, potassium. The only thing that was kept under lock and key was the chromic acid used for cleaning lab glassware. That was only taken out when there were two people in the prep room, red light over the door…
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