Fire

Once I was told that I should shout "Fire!!!" if I want to get people's attention - because everybody would be so excited that they'd come round to see what an interesting thing goes on. We were supposed to do this in a case of emergency, when you usually yell "Help!", but that might not work because it's "boring".

The fire everyone of us extinguished.

But on Monday we got safety training for the campus here which consists of a lecture about chemicals and general hazards and - of the actual use of a fire extinguisher. Everybody had to try it. And to be honest, the first contact with this actual heavy monster is scary, but the final extinction is fun. We had a trough with lighted gas and "just for fun" our instructor but some gas around it as well.

There are two famous kinds of fire extinguishers, one with chalk (calcium carbonate) and one with carbon dioxide. Because the chalk one leaves a mess (the powder is everywhere...) we were trained with carbon dioxide one. It feels like a small explosion if you pull the handle and the compressed, cooled gas comes out!

All the training has been increased after a horrible accident at the UCLA in 2001, when a student died after a few weeks in hospital due to the burns she got during a combustion in a chemistry lab. There are many articles on the Internet about it, e.g. here.