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Teacher demonstrated boiling water in a pyrex pot for some experiment and we had to replicate this, sent away to collect items needed and continue at desks.
As fresh faced 1st years our teacher had us trying to find the boiler point of meths by errr heating beakers of meths over Bunsen burners - quite impressive that only one of the 16 beakers went woof & we all escaped with our eyebrows.
It doesn't stop when you're a kid, for boys at least...
Mid 20's playing darts in the Pub.
Hypothesis:
Friend 1: My shoes are stab proof, like steel toe caps but better, as they are light and flexible.
Method:
Friend 2: Launches, no, pile-drives a dart into friend 1's foot
Result: Screaming.
Conclusion: The shoes were not stab proof. Better get another round in.
Can we do Bunsen burners now?
One from my Dad i've always remembered. The day his grammar school told the boys they no longer had to wear caps he was in chemistry. So the boys lit their caps with the bunsen burners and threw them out the first floor window.
Except the dust cart happened to be just below collecting rubbish from the school. Cue a burning dust cart.
I do recall one of my classmates catching fire to his tie in Chemistry, it would have usually been a problem that people weren't wearing a tie when they should have been, so why anyone was wearing a tie when they shouldn't have been was and is still a mystery.
In GCSE CDT I designed and made a pair of ski vices for servicing skis which I still have and use. Aluminium casting, milling, lathe work, threading and tapping. Not likely anyone would have the kit to do that now, by the sound of it.
My physics teacher set fire to a metal waste paper bin contents with a discarded cigarette he was using to fill the room with smoke to demonstrate a laser. When he realised it was on fire he picked it up to take it outside as we were in a normal classroom instead of the lab. Halfway to the door his tie dangled in and caught fire so he dropped the bin onto the floor, grabbed a pair of scissors from his desk drawer and coolly cut the burning tie off at the knot!
Anyone else struggling with the concept of Molgrips being a feral teenager lobbing knives around? I thought he'd be sat at the back, tutting. 😁
I missed a lot of the really stupid stuff because I was a girly swot and all the headbangers were in lower sets. That and I dropped Chemistry as soon as I could. I heard tell of a sodium "incident"; and another time the fume cupboard failed catastrophically, the teacher said a word he probably shouldn't have said in class and told everyone to run for it.
A mate of mine had a knack for blowing up electronics. Not intentionally, he was just crap. Apparently when ICs of the day blew they blew out downwards, and a sudden unscheduled demonstration of Newton's Third Law is how he ended up with a 741 Op Amp embedded in the ceiling tile.
Then there was Warren. But I've spoken of Warren before. A bored B-streamer, unsupervised gas taps, a carrier bag and a cigarette lighter were not the wisest of combinations. It was like something out of Street Fighter, I've never seen kids scatter that fast.
I'd just be keeping an eye on him for a few weeks, in case this was him trying to remove his fingerprints before embarking on a spree of bank jobs and jewellery heists.
I suppose we've all done daft things with tools/machinery in our teenage years.
Mine was aged 15 with this.
Only 24 stitches.
But i was lucky thinking of it now, i could have lost the hand.
this just gave me a proustian moment. Innocent times, making pointy things to poke and throw at each other.
Oh yes! We used to make teeny little darts, using spent matchsticks. Cut* two little slots crosswise at one end and fold little squares of paper to fit in the slots as fins, then break the heads off of pins and push into the other end and wrap thick-ish fuse wire around. Then throw them around the classroom.
*We used to carry penknives around too - I used mine in tech drawing, because I could get a much finer point on my pencils than the teachers desk sharpener, which always seemed to break the very end off the lead.
and the blackboard duster bounced off my head
That’s something I managed to avoid, but bits of chalk were often used as an attention-getting devices. There was one particular teacher who was fond of the blackboard eraser for getting the attention of those not paying adequate attention to his lessons.
I remember one science demonstration with a piece of sodium dropped onto a bowl of water, the metal whizzed around the bowl in a suitably satisfying fashion, until it suddenly exploded with bits skidding across the desk and one bit hitting a pupil’s blazer sleeve and burning a hole right through it. Fortunately no skin was harmed in this experiment. The little dotted line of burn marks were still on the desktop when I finished school.
This thread reminds me of this
😂
My biggest Craft & Design disaster was spilling a whole jar of varnish over a relatively new Russell Athletic jacket 😖 Certainly improved the waterproofing but since the entire jacket was now one big white stain I obviously couldn't wear it to school again 🙄
Well, he’ll have to use his other hand now, it’ll feel like someone else is doing it……… picking his nose.
My CDT teacher had an old camper with a fuel guage that didn't work. He ran out of fuel on the way to school and was seen walking back from the garage by pupils with petrol can in one hand and his customary Silk Cut lit in the other....
I’m sensible now because back then I was lucky.
Genuine Lolz,plus --> #storyofmylife
103 posts with practically 100% of the opinions* saying that he should have been more careful
I didn't expect that. What's the OP going to do in the face of that, still continue with the threat to rain fire and fury on the school and governors anyway?
* not 100% of the posts because a fair proportion of them were to say "sanded fingers? Hold my beer!", which entertained me no end.
Did nobody else read the OP and have their inner teenager say 'I wonder if you can 'cut' your fingernails on a desk sander?'
And I say that as someone whose second teaching subject is DT...
On the subject of physics, our insane teacher at secondary school (1987) did an experiment one time where we all joined hands, then he turned some electric thing on that was attached to the first person in the ring. The whole class fell backwards, it was like we had been kicked hard in the chest.
He admitted he had the thing turned up too high, but part of me thinks he did it to every new class, on account of being a psycho.
I'm in a FB group for a high school reunion next year. I asked if anyone remembered who got a javelin through their foot/leg.
I got 4 (FOUR) names 😆
WCA is still trying to work out which anecdote will win him the thread.....
I enjoy a bit of chemistry. Technicians are wise to things like this and it is usual policy to chop reactive metals up in the prep room and the ribbon stays there. Two things in particular went out through me: Magnesium and wooden splints. Everybody remembers the magnesium, but the most abused item is definitely the splints.
Managed to avoid most of the horror stories although I did have a case of those awful squeezy reagent bottles being used as water pistols (with hydrochloric acid, OK they were lucky to get as far as being issued 1M but still). Stopped a few plastic beakers being heated (I lit the bunsens for the first few uses by S1s.)
Alkali metals - perspex screen over the bowl for sodium which is the really dodgy one.
Ethanol/IPA whoosh rockets are a highlight of demos, there is a video out there of me shaking one up in preparation. I consented!
Story went round that an aluminium-iodine reaction (carried out outside) did not go off. Reaction mix taken back inside and half way up the stairwell guess what happened. Expensive redecoration required.
Van der Graafs - sometimes I would work in a department that had a working one. My physics teacher once charged up a pupil and got him to shake hands with an unsuspecting jannie working outside.
Van der Graafs – sometimes I would work in a department that had a working one.
Rev one up and stick some poor kids head against it was the norm in our school!
I wouldn't believe a word that came out of the mouth of my 13 year old if he'd had a similar accident in DT. Boys of that age are daft and once they've been daft they will give you the version of the truth that puts them in the best light with no thought to the ongoing consequences.
Almost certainly doing it wrong if not dicking about. Hopefully lesson learnt. What actual good will going ballistic do?
Hope the fingers heal up soon.
Shit happens. Did he film it for his tik tok channel. It’s a life lesson, sure at 13 there will be plenty more to come. Kids are not made of glass and need exposure to the reality of life.<br />You’ll be laughing about it sooner than you think.
Chill. (Says the father of 3 ‘adult’ children who have had many learning experiences)
WCA is still trying to work out which anecdote will win him the thread…..
TBH, he'll only need to pick the next cab off the rank from his list of 'Minor incidents and near misses' for this one. 'Major' and 'Serious' files will still be in the filing cabinet
Now trying to imagine the school days of WCA
Must have looked like Hogwarts after the battle at the end of Deathly Hallows Part 2
I loved D&T or CDT as it was called then. We did all sorts of dangerous stuff, Brass and alu casting, lathe work etc. I got an A*.
Sadly the way things are going we will end up with the teacher demonstrating down the front of the class without the kids having a hands on experience.
Unfortunately were dealing with young persons who are less experienced, need more instruction, training and supervision and are likely to arse about.
Fingers and nails will grow back and I guess the ops son will now be well aware of the hazards of the sander.
OP was quick to call out the school for not getting back to him within 2hrs, well what about all of us? We have been waiting even longer for a suitable update!
speaking to their lawyer, has been told to make no comment before issuing a statement?
My physics teacher once charged up a pupil
Er, were things that different in the 70s?
Sadly the way things are going we will end up with the teacher demonstrating down the front of the class without the kids having a hands on experience.
Unfortunately were dealing with young persons who are less experienced, need more instruction, training and supervision and are likely to arse about.
The subject is slowly dying imo, but not for those reasons.
Firstly it is expensive. Expensive to resource and expensive to man. I teach in an independent school and our workshops are ugly but very serviceable. Lots of well used good toys and to those of you with grey (or no) hair, it would look very familiar. Materials, servicing and repair/replacement costs are eyewatering however. Down the road is an academy in a 10 year old building - one of the privately constructed and leased back numbers. Their workshop is awesome - better toys than us. But it's also immaculate because it's never used. The school has no budget for materials of any consequence. The staff estimate every child spends less than an hour a term doing practical work. Then to man, you have maximum class sizes that are smaller than most subjects. That creates a nause for timetablers and is expensive. A lot of schools are now saying - 'sorry DT have a class of 30+ anyway and work something out'. That often means half the class are sat doing paperwork whilst a few on rotation are doing the practical work.
Secondly its the staffing - we are now a generation on from the decline in practical skills as children. These are the new young adults becoming teachers and to be honest finding a young member of staff with a broad enough practical skillset to do the job, and then prepared to be a teacher is really hard. Those with the skills vote with their feet and do something else. I'd earn more as a joiner, plumber, electrician than I do now. The subset of people with degrees, the admin skills, the patience and the pastoral skills to be a modern day teacher AND with the practical wherewithal to do it in DT is vanishingly small.
The exam boards are aware of this and have dumbed down the GCSE, A Levels, National 5s and A levels accordingly. Only 25% of the coursework mark at GCSE and A level is for making the final 'thing' - So 12.5% of the overall grade (50% is from the exam). And you can get the marks to be honest with a bit of 'crafting', laser cutting and a bit of 3D printing if you really wanted to. It's more about design, prototyping and concept development now - all good things but it's a shame the final outcome is no longer all that important. Persuading a head to spend £4-5M on a new building of workshops when you know that is practically impossible. Triggering another generation of spiralling reduction in skills.
...anyway thanks OP. great thread. Feel free to cite in evidence.
Only wish I could contribute more. Boffiny kid, hated woodwork and metalwork etc (can't believe we had decent power tools at middle school) but was given free reign with a couple of others for a short while in the chemistry lab. We used go get to play with the crazy heavy bottle of mercury. The diminishing level of surgical alcohol may have been what put a stop to that.
And yet, despite my being utterly shite and having zero interest in the woodwork etc, stuff that goes in at that age largely stays in. And so for confidence with general DIY, bulding things out of wood (from bark off to finished coffee table etc) I've had far more use over the years than I have from my Russian or whatever.
And I would still fear a belt sander. And vice-related dares.
Pleased to report only 1 kid sent to minor injuries in15 yrs teaching DT was one of my top students at the time! He managed to slice through thumb nail with craft knife.
Parents were told quickly and met him at unit , put down as a learning experience (dad was a joiner) hopefully all sorted soon with lessons learned
All of these stories bring back memories from my school days in CDT and chemistry (I went on to do a chemistry degree and a significant chunk of it was down to how good my secondary school teachers were).
I (and a few other kids who could be trusted) were routinely let loose in CDT over a lunchtime - that simply would not be allowed now. We got the cool chemistry demos too back in the days when covering half the classroom in orange foam was not seen as a sackable offence but actually something fun.
Towards the end of my time there, the school was starting to move to doing a shedload of titrations rather than blowing shit up. How dull.
But yeah, there were kids who sliced a nail off or set fire to their tie - it was usually used as a learning experience for the rest of us.
Look children at how stupid little Frankie has been. Don't be like Frankie.
The subject is slowly dying imo,
The sixth Form college I was at closed their AS/A level D&T and 3-D art courses in 2013 for exactly the reasons you gave convert although there were other issues as well. Recruiting too few students, maintenance costs going through the roof and the cost of materials was becoming prohibitive. I realised that it was becoming unviable when our heat treatment area failed its annual inspection/ maintenance and was told there was no money to get it fixed/ upgraded. Which made teaching the two jewellery courses I ran a bit tricky mid year not to mention the Product Design A level with the students halfway through their second year with projects already decided.
The same had also happened to both our other local 6th form colleges a year or two before, although some independent and 11-18 schools did offer A level within 10 miles or so.
So I guess I'm the only one that will give the OP the benefit of the doubt here.
I've had teachers and work colleagues that were absolutely useless at explaining things, it may well be that the pupils were instructed verbally with a closed question to confirm understanding (ie do you understand rather than now tell me how you're going to do the job).
So yes he might have been instructed and yes he may have not carried out said instructions properly but he may well have done so in good faith.
I can also see how a plate might flip and drag digits into a disc sander if the table is too far from the wheel and it's being held wrong in the same way bench grinders can.
That it happened once is bad enough but twice? If that happened in my industry someone would be in a world of hurt and that's before the ONR (who deal with H&S) get the report. Some of you need to pull your heads out the 70's.
Pleased to report only 1 kid sent to minor injuries in15 yrs teaching DT was one of my top students at the time! He managed to slice through thumb nail with craft knife.
Parents were told quickly and met him at unit , put down as a learning experience (dad was a joiner) hopefully all suitably sorted soon with lessons learned all round
I survived school with only a few scars, well quite a few really. A mining degree soon added to the total with many opportunities for death but with such good tuition and fear that I had a lot of respect for what I gas handling. I still like things that go bang.
Most dangerous period of my life was metallography. A full chem lab with polishing wheels with different grits on there. You did the coarse grinding holding the samples until they are stable enough to go on a mechanical shining arm with diamond paste.
Water lubed your fingers got so cold you didn't realised you had lost fingerprints and nail edges until the blood started spraying around. Glory days.
One of the other members on the uk workshop forum has just contacted the blade on her tablesaw, the results are suitably gory. A couple of sanded fingers are a win in comparison.
https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/threads/table-saw-kickback-and-trimmed-finger.145485/
My CDT teacher portrayed himself as the school hard man. So that, and the combination of sharp scary tools, meant no-one dared put a foot wrong in class, as death from a number of sources could arise.
However....one day a couple of school mates thought it'd be hilarious to push me in the big storage cupboard and lock me in.
I pushed down on the handle and it didn't move, so I had a teenage tantrum and kicked the door as hard as I could, breaking it but it still didn't open.
A couple of seconds later the teacher opened the door. I thought I was going to get my head caved in. Instead he pointed to the handle, and with no emotion showed me that in order to open the door, one had to lift the handle, not push it down. And there was no lock on the door.....
A girl in my CDT class managed to run the centre of her middle finger into a bandsaw. She got several mm into the nail before realising and calmly wandering round to the teacher who almost fainted. No lasting damage though, I don't think.
I got in trouble once, in a typical (for me) case of bad timing.
My mate Delvin had been getting small bits of mdf & firing them across the classroom by flicking them at the wrong side of the disc sander for most of the lesson.
I went over near the end of the lesson to have a look and he asked if I wanted a go. Of course, I did.
Just as I was lining up my first (and only) shot, the head teacher walked in. I didn't see as I was concentrating on getting my flick right, but Delvin did so quickly moved away from the sander & looked like he was busy with something else.
My mdf projectile flew in a perfect arc in slow motion & landed almost at the headteacher's feet.
He should have commended me for my accuracy, but instead I got a telling off & detention.
My wife machine-sewed her finger into the garment she was making a few years ago.Needle right through the nail, thread attached and all.
Disappointingly, I was out of the house and she'd managed to get it out by the time I returned.
@jimw might have been my DT teacher at a South West Midlands sixth form, class of 2001... Not heard of any other place offering a jewellery course. Fond memories
I doubt my notoriously namby pamby primary school boss would think twice about this. Tell mum at home time and ban him from the sander for a week. Moan at school? Way to go to getting yourself a bad reputation.
On the subject of physics, our insane teacher at secondary school (1987) did an experiment one time where we all joined hands, then he turned some electric thing on that was attached to the first person in the ring. The whole class fell backwards, it was like we had been kicked hard in the chest.
He admitted he had the thing turned up too high, but part of me thinks he did it to every new class, on account of being a psycho.
I did the vandergraf generator a few times and got the whole class holding hands with one kid holding a tap. That was a memorable lesson!
It stopped when I had a kid with a(very serious )heart complaint. At that point I realised I'd never asked about heart conditions, nor had I considered someone might have one and not know it.
Now I just get the "hard" kids to bump knuckles. A mate was still getting the charged up kids to touch another kids teeth. COVID put a stop to that.
I melted a deks and chair with a thermit reaction. I also had a thermit go off under my hands. I got distracted and started telling a kid off after I'd set it going. No I'll effects for me much to my surprise