At 09:53 AM 12/4/02 -0600, Reggie Bautista wrote:
Russell Chapman wrote:That depends on how often you use candles, oil lamps, oil simmerpots, potpourri, and other things that put extra stuff in the air.How dirty can a ceiling get??
And how often you do experiments that involve making a working volcano model on the living room coffee table... :-)
It wasn't a volcano, but the results of one experiment that . . . ahem . . . produced excess amounts of unwanted gaseous byproducts which were sufficient to remove the top from the container and create a fountain of chemical mix which removed the paint from the areas of the ceiling it touched.
Results:
(1) Yes, I figured out what went wrong. (Fortunately, the eruption occurred after I had set the container down and stepped away from the table.)
(2) My father got to repaint the kitchen (at about the same time, a boilover from another experiment had sprayed black corrosive stuff on one wall, so the whole thing needed repainting).
(3) My father also got to help me put shelves, etc., in the utility room to use that area, rather than the kitchen, as laboratory space, with the additional caveat that experiments involving the use of heat were to be conducted out of doors on the patio. (Concrete, however, is not the best surface over which to handle expensive lab glassware purchases with one's allowance. And then there were days when the wind seemed to take the fumes directly into the neighbor's open bedroom window . . . )
(4) Eventually I decided to become a professional astronomer rather than a chemist.
--Ronn! :)
I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon.
I never dreamed that I would see the last.
--Dr. Jerry Pournelle
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