Of course I do - that's a staple.

I knew a guy who decided to make silver fulminate, which has similar properties (safe wet, very touchy when dry). Set up his equipment, but he needed silver, so he tossed in a handfull of dimes (for you young-uns, dimes, quarters, half dollars and silver dollars were once made of silver, not nickle clad copper). What he forgot was that the silver in dimes was alloyed with copper for durability. Copper fulminate doesn't wait to dry out. His gear disappeared without trace.

I also heard of the college professor in Salt Lake who tried making nitroglycerine. It didn't work. Even hitting a drop with a hammer had no effect, so he put it in a jar and stashed it in his dresser drawer. A month later, in the middle of the night, it went sour and turned his dresser into toothpicks.

All was not chemicals, however. Another that happened at the U of Utah was a physics professor who built a gonzo capacitor tree. These were the favorite of we who were not fulfilled by the sparks from Van de Graff generators and Tesla coils (capacitor banks were later used to fire satelite killer lasers). The capacitor bank works by charging a huge bank of large capacitors in parallel to their full capacity, then closing a spark gap on the first two. A chain of spark gaps hooks all the capacitors in series. The difference between a capacitor bank and a Van de Graff is ENERGY!

The professor demoed the unit on his lecture bench. Unfortunately, his top spark gap was wider than the distance from one pole to the fire main just above the accoustic ceiling, resulting in significant repair costs for the school and a change to dry cloths.

One of my own favorites was in a summer school science class between Jr. High and High School (this was post Sputnik so anyone who could pass an IQ test was being railroaded into science by the schools). I chose "gnerating hydrogen" as my first "experiment". This was something I was already quite familiar with, since filling balloons with hydrogen and sending them drifting over Burbank with slow fuses attached was one of my favorite entertainments.

I didn't like the shape of gas generating bottles so I chose a stylish Erlenmeyer flask, and I was quite fond of thistle tubes which were more interesting than plain old funnels, so that's what I built my gas generator with.

Then I got some aluminum foil and sodium hydroxide and was about to start the experiment when the teacher saw what I was doing. He was distressed, and told me aluminum foil and lye was much too dangerous and I had to do it by the book with mossy zinc and sulphuric acid. So I got mossy zinc and concentrated sulphuric acid from the stockroom.

What I didn't know was that I should have used dilute sulphuric acid becaue the reaction is very slow with concnetrated, but hey, concentrated is better, right? Who'd want dilute?

My experiment partner, Alan Stock, was ready to light off the delivery tube with a match to finish the experiment. "Stop!" I said. This is going real slow, there's probably still oxygen in the flask.

Eventually told him, "it's got to be ready by now, light it off". I stood there staring at a completely clean and empty lab bench. Then the head of a thistle tube bounced on it.

Interestingly, Alan got a small cut on his elbow, and there was glass throughout the room, but I, standing right over it, was untouched by either glass or acid. Amazing.

Unfortunately, my main experiment in High School chemistry was interrupted by the teacher being spotted coming down the hall. I had the oxygen bottle hooked to the gas lines and was blowing oxygen back into the lines expecting it to get to the bunsen burners in the lab dowstairs. Ah well.