It was time for explosions, stinky burning things, mangled metal, strong acids, and mushroom clouds at Beaty Warren Middle School again.
The building was still standing at the end of classes on Thursday. The annual Chemistry Magic Show didn't do too much damage.
The entire sixth-grade class at Beaty cycled through the show presented by high school students.
The Beaty students started out in small groups, doing hands-on experiments directed by the chemistry students.
At "Reaction in a Bag" they added reagents to chemicals and wrote down what happened. The chemicals turned different colors, bubbled, changed in texture, and gave off heat.
Each student got to make and take home some colorful silly putty. They stirred glue and food coloring together with chemicals, then squished it by hand. The sticky mess eventually took on the properties of silly putty.
The third station demonstrated what can happen when a gas quickly turns into a liquid. Students heated pop cans that contained a small amount of water. When the water boiled, the students flipped the can over into a beaker of cold water. The rapid change in the volume of stuff inside the can caused the metal to crush.
When the sixth-graders completed all three stations, they returned to their seats and watched as the older students did some more complex, and dangerous, experiments.
They saw a purple flame that smelled something like burned marshmallows.
The sixth-graders were interested, but were told that they shouldn't try the experiments at home.
One student asked what was added to the dry chemicals to make it burn purple. "You want to do this at home, don't you?" senior chemistry student Alyssa D'Alessandro responded. "You can't get this at home."
She explained that a strong acid was used, but she didn't say exactly which one.
When a small amount of "orange juice" turned into an overflowing fountain of "strawberry float" a student asked if it tasted like strawberry. Chemistry students quickly responded, "No, you don't want to drink it."
No one asked to drink the glowing blue liquid created in "Luminol - the Blue Glow."
One student claimed the silly putty tasted sour. The chemists encouraged students not to find out, the main ingredient was white glue.
Not all of the experiments went over as planned.
One class's version of the "Big Bang," an explosion using hydrogen gas, was classified as a "Tiny Bang" by junior chemistry student Ryan Ottney. Senior Jamie Marion promised to let more hydrogen build up for the next class, though he mentioned that an earlier run of the experiment worked so well it hurt his ears.
The mushroom cloud made a big, smelly cloud, but the mushroom part wasn't always easy to pick out.
After 45 minutes of heating cans, setting off hydrogen gas explosions, purple flames, and mushroom clouds, the three rooms used on the second floor of the school were warm, stinky, and hazy.
Each sixth-grader was required to answer questions about each experiment and the high school students didn't hold back from using advanced terminology.
"Was this chemical reaction exothermic or endothermic?" was one of the questions on the worksheet related to "Luminol."
The correct answer? Exothermic. The reaction gave off energy in the form of light.