Teacher Flambe 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
My chemistry teacher teaches in a school in Portland Oregon. He was teaching us about the alkali metals (the ones on the far left of the periodic table). If you drop one in water, it will fizzle, flame, and produce heat and hydrogen. Eventually, the heat will ignite the hydrogen and result in an explosion.
We were working with potassium, one of the more reactive alkalis. The local laypersons were not too impressed with the whole watch-it-burn-in-water deal, and they asked our teacher to put it in some ethanol, since the effect would be somewhat the same.
The results consisted in a plume of flames, glass shrapnel that used to be a beaker, and 6 hospital visits, including the teacher. To paraphrase the doctor, "Your teacher was just 1 or 2 feet away from a Darwin Award." Submitted on 06/07/2002
Submitted by:
Steve Cole
Reference:
I saw it
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