Five boys arrested as fire destroys school in Lancashire

[cronus]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23926188

[Clinton Huxley]

The perils of teaching the principles of combustion in science class.

[cronus]

The perils of teaching the principles of combustion in science class.

Chemistry block was kept well away from the main premises when I was a kid. Then we handled real chemicals that did occasionally combust or give off noxious fumes. Now it's all 'elf & safety.

[Strontium Dog]

Our chemistry teacher (the bonkers but amiable moustachioed British creationist who has been in at least one Dawkins tv doco) used to demonstrate the flammable properties of liquids by pouring them onto the desk and setting them alight. Caused at least one evacuation of the school that way.

[Clinton Huxley]

These boys are just the stooges. Bet a teacher put them up to it due to the horror of having to come back off holiday to teach these scrotes.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

We had small samples of various radioactive isotopes kept in our science block at school.

[MrJonno]

Our chemistry teacher (the bonkers but amiable moustachioed British creationist who has been in at least one Dawkins tv doco) used to demonstrate the flammable properties of liquids by pouring them onto the desk and setting them alight. Caused at least one evacuation of the school that way.

Is he the guy who runs the British Answers in Genesis, as I've seen him speak at Skeptics in the Pub (200 drunk atheists) and while his presentation was factually complete and utter bollocks it was a quality presentation

[laklak]

This is what comes from attempting to educate the lower orders. They should be in a factory doing something useful.

[Thinking Aloud]

And yes, Leyland is the ancestral home of Leyland Buses, Leyland Trucks, and Leyland Paints. And a few miles from where I grew up. Which is about as irrelevant as a can of beans.

[klr]

Er ... hold on. I thought school was still out for summer?

Maybe the urchins in question couldn't face the new term.

[JimC]

Our chemistry teacher (the bonkers but amiable moustachioed British creationist who has been in at least one Dawkins tv doco) used to demonstrate the flammable properties of liquids by pouring them onto the desk and setting them alight. Caused at least one evacuation of the school that way.

One of our science teachers helped us to make a reasonable quantity of hydrazine in science club after school. Then we poured it down a drain and chucked in a match. Flames 20 metres high!

Can't do that sort of thing these days...

(in my past, I myself have caused more than one evacuation of a science lab, usually by setting up an apparatus to make chlorine, using far too much reagent, and not being able to shut it down. Shades of the Somme!)