Weird stuff you did as a brat?

When I was a rug rat, I stuck the blades of a pair of scissors in an electric socket and burned a chunk off the tip and popped a fuse. I vaguely remember it - I was probably 3 or 4.

Around the same time, my father and GF were replacing a gas stove, and had disconnected the gas line at the floor. I dropped a penny into the pipe. When they installed the new stove, the pilot lights lit OK, but when they turned on the burners, the flame at first burned high, and then died. Hey, I was just trying to pay the gas company!

My cousin, who was a teen at the time, was visiting. We had a kitchen chair with a torn plastic seat cover, and I hid a pin in the cushion, point up. I anxiously waited until he sat down. Wow! I never heard so many cuss words!

I always played with a magnifying glass in the sun, burning holes in leaves, incinerating ants, and popping caps. When I tried to burn a hole in a leaf at school, it set a whole pile on fire, but luckily I was able to stomp it out before I got into big trouble.

Other kids brought lunches in their lunch boxes. I packed mine with pieces from my chemistry set, and I can remember making a piece of chalk bubble with a mild acid, and chasing girls with it.

I always thought a 1.5 volt doorbell battery could not give you a shock. I hooked one up to a big electromagnet, and then disconnected the wire while holding both ends. What a shock!

In high school, there were some old TV sets in a storage room, and I was given the job to remove any parts I wanted and then smash the picture tubes so they could be more safely disposed of. I put some of them in a box at the bottom of a stairwell, went up the stairs, and heaved a cinderblock down to smash them. Maybe a second after I did, the vice-principal opened the door!

I found a box of old fluorescent bulbs and some round steel electrical box covers. My friend and I tossed the bulbs into a stream, and as they floated by, we threw the covers at the tubes. If they hit just right, they made an impressive splash. I'm a lot more of an environmentalist now!

Paul

Gunpowder in ever-increasing quantities until we got burnt, badly. It was easy, the old man had bags of saltpetre for curing ham or bacon, sulphur was for the taking at the local fertiliser depot, and charcoal was from a little DIY bonfire down on the river bank, away from prying adult eyes.

Electro caps across the mains (230vac)

Placing .22 rounds in the vyce and whacking them with a large hammer.

Trying to make chloroform per "The Golden Book of Chemistry" Probably one of the reasons why it got pulled from most school libraries !

Making Nitrogen Triiodide in larger and larger amounts until we scared the bejesus out of ourselves one day.

I boiled the zinc-carbon cells on the gas stove - after a bit the carbon rods got ejected by the pressure. Made fairly decent arc rods. Also melted scrap lead (soldiers) in same saucepan and poured into still-damp plaster mould for of a penny. Spat all over the back of my hand. Worst one was (under parental supervision this time) wiring transformer to mains expecting to get a low voltage supply to power something - it was a 2:1 intervalve tranny and produced nice smoke...

Geo

At my first job out of college, I ran a piece of small plastic tubing from my bench to another bench, out of sight. The far end of the tube was hidden in a piece of equipment that a friend of mine was putting together.

When he turned it on for the first time, I blew cigarette smoke thru the plastic tube...

Such a commotion !!!!

My bad !!!

Andy in Eureka, Texas

The other way to do that is to stick a resistor in the power cord receptacle (IEC or cheater cord, etc.).

Tim

Why are you a top posting retard? Oh yeah... the bullet hit you in the head.

We used to fire boxes of .22s with a flat rock and a hammer.

I modified my .22 pellet pistol to accept a .22 short cartridge.

Getting it to fire was the interesting part.

A favorite where I used to work was a 10uf 10v electrolytic inside the mains plug ( UK plugs have plenty of room inside!) .

Probably the best one though was when I put a 1N4007 diode inside the body of the mains fuse of a colleague's Safeblock - took him ages to figure that one out..!

"Tim Williams" wrote in news:xkEjk.883$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe06.iad:

that's like twisting a piece of bubble wrap when a tech turns on a repair.

A high school friend stuck a straight pin through a line cord (and nipped it off), and then watched when his sister plugged it in. Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

I made them out of rocket engine innards and thin wall conduit with mail order underwater demolition fuse. Nitrogen tri-iodide was a favorite too. I'd have DHS all over my ass today.

Reminds me, the smoke "bomb" was actually a Jetex (engine) tablet ;-)

Around 1953-54.

...Jim Thompson

Oh. The joys of "chemistry sets" from the 60's, mixing stuff on the kitchen table, things going wrong, things going right, didn't have a clue what i was doing.........ahh, bliss

DHS..... nasty idea, reminds of McCarthy, somehow. You really should do something about them

martin

Do you actually think that McCarthyism ever died out to begin with?

It should... so should lobbyism.

The screwin' we're gettin' ain't worth the screwin' we're gettin'.

Nothing to do with "McCarthyism". Actually, McCarthy had nothing to "McCarthyism" either.

The best example of alarming a co-worker I know of happened while a 20 ton toilet paper greasing machine was being rigged for loading onto a truck, and some idiot reached under the partially raised machine to grab a sling (big time safety rule violation). Someone tipped over a nearby four foot square 1" thick steel plate which hit flat on the concrete floor with a bang that could be felt through the floor quite nicely just as the idiot reached the sling. After the fight was broken up there was an extended trip to the mens room for clean-up :-).

i will top side bottem left right round post if i wont to.

how bout this one

a kid at school stuck a peace of solder >

Archimedes' Lever wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

McCarthy turned out to be right,according to KGB records.

What? Everyone that s*it their pants when the steel clapped?

All it takes to really piss someone off in an HV lab is a simple clap of the hands at an inappropriate moment.