User blog comment:Omega natsu2/Tell Me Your Story./@comment-2109035-20131023205931

As for the full story....

{{Story| This was sometime last year. I was extracting a chemical called d-Limonene from orange peels for the purpose of dissolving polystyrene based products (styrofoam). The chemical is environmentally friendly, and it makes styrofoam much easier to biodegrade, reducing it to 1/20th the original size. Anywho, the process involves steam distillation, which is basically just boiling the orange peels and allowing the chemical in a steam form to go through some piping before it collects into a beaker. For the apparatus, you need a lid on the top of it so that none of the steam or fumes escape. Funny thing about d-Limonene was that it's extremely flammable, to the point where it was considered for use as a biofuel. Well, I forgot to put the lid back on, allowing the fumes to escape as it boiled, so when I tried turning the bunsen burner on, all the fumes ignited and a large fireball about the size of a basketball flew up and completely charred the apparatus, blackened the chimney and made about 30 freshmen and sophomores shit bricks. Needless to say, my teacher was pissed and I got a reputation as a "crazy scientist". So, even though there was only minimum damage, the rumors that spread made it seem like I literally blew the whole classroom up. I also made no attempt to rectify the rumors as I thought they were hilarious. The explosion was also hilarious, but I forced myself to refrain from laughing right in front of my teacher (which was really hard). All in all, I don't regret blowing the shit up, and I still got to finish making my chemicals, so t'was a good day for Fin. ( -__-)