Chemistry for Everyone edited by
Accident Anecdotes
Jay A. Young
Safety First When Teaching Chemistry to Children
12916 Allerton Lane Silver Spring, MD 20904
Jay A. Young 12916 Allerton Lane, Silver Spring, MD 20904
Gifted 9- and 10-year-old children are eager to learn. We can teach them a variety of useful information in summer programs, information that is not available in the school curriculum during the school year. This can be a time to teach them some chemistry. We all know colleagues who get a grant from some foundation, assign the teaching to a graduate student, sit back, relax, and do not concern themselves with the graduate student’s compliance with the assigned task. One graduate student decided that a way to get his children interested would be through a pyrotechnic exercise— have the kids make some sparklers. He was unfamiliar with the pyrotechnic literature and decided instead to develop his own recipe for preparing the sparkler mixture. His recipe included mixing KClO3 crystals, powdered S, and Fe filings in an evaporating dish, then adding a bit of collodion to hold the concoction together. Then this was applied to one-foot lengths of pre-cut, straightened coat hanger wire. In a classroom environment, the children were given
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several ounces of the ingredients, evaporating dishes, and the wires. They were instructed to use the wires as stirrers to mix the dry ingredients. Because the supply of the chemicals was insufficient for each child to prepare his or her own mixture, the task of mixing the ingredients was assigned to the two six-year-olds who were most interested. The inevitable happened. Almost as soon as the mixing was initiated, there was a loud explosion, followed by a fire. Several children were severely burned, and the two who had been doing the mixing spent several very painful weeks in the hospital; one of the two will never fully recover. The graduate student who was in charge is no longer at that university. But as far as is known the professor who assigned the task to the graduate student is still at that institution. Editor’s Note Accident Anecdotes has been adapted from material that originally appeared in Chemical Health and Safety. It is reprinted here with permission.
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 77 No. 10 October 2000 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
