Australia's Science Forum

Two children are in a serious condition and eight others are injured after they suffered burns when a classroom experiment went wrong at a primary school on Sydney’s northern beaches.

Police and paramedics were called to Manly West Public School on Griffith Street in Balgowlah following reports students had suffered burns during an incident involving hazardous materials about 1.20pm on Monday.

My dad told me about this and the way he described it I thought they had used conc sulfuric acid for the carbon snake experiment !! Turns out it was methylated spirits, bicarb and sand.

And sugar. We've done it here small-scale. Fine to do inside. I wonder why they decided on outdoors. Teacher must have used a lot of metho. It would have been like napalm - those kids are not going to enjoy science with flames or explosions in the future. I wonder if anyone did a risk assessment. Surely flames and wind would be a no-no.

My thought was: what goes wrong when your risk assessment doesn't factor in the weather.

And the moral to the story - untrained people shouldn't be handling chemicals. Safework NSW is going to have a field day - the school's RA was clearly inadequate and what training did the teacher have? Or being a DofE school, was the teacher relying on CSIS? Don't think Safework will wear it. Expect the school to be copping some legal action too.

Not sure how badly the kids were injured but get the feeling it could have been worse.

Two children are still in Westmead with burns!! So pretty bad!
So frightening for all involved.

I just got sent a link via RiskAssess from a teacher who wants to show the kids the experiment that went so wrong. The first thing my eye fell on was "Do not perform this experiment in windy conditions". This warning was repeated several times. I think that teacher is in big trouble.

But being a primary school, My guess would be they do not RA at all. Think you are right teacher in big trouble.

Teacher definitely in trouble but the Principal will be in more!

Three of the four children who remained in hospital after an explosion at a Northern Beaches primary school yesterday have now been discharged.
One student, being treated at the Children's Hospital at Westmead, is now stable.

Showed the prac on morning TV today! Seriously, how many random people will be out there doing it today?

So true MTG so sad.

labbassistant wrote: ↑22 Nov 2022, 07:08 My dad told me about this and the way he described it I thought they had used conc sulfuric acid for the carbon snake experiment !! Turns out it was methylated spirits, bicarb and sand.

Where did you read/hear it was metho? I googled the experiment because I could only think of the sulphuric acid one. The only ones I found using bicarb, sugar and sand asked for lighter fluid!

The versions I've seen call for lighter fluid, metho, or ethanol. Perhaps any accelerant will do.

Yes Rosalie it was Metho, it's only a primary school so they would NOT have had sulfuric Acid. Did it outside in strong wind's.

RosalieL wrote: ↑22 Nov 2022, 12:04

labbassistant wrote: ↑22 Nov 2022, 07:08 My dad told me about this and the way he described it I thought they had used conc sulfuric acid for the carbon snake experiment !! Turns out it was methylated spirits, bicarb and sand.

Where did you read/hear it was metho? I googled the experiment because I could only think of the sulphuric acid one. The only ones I found using bicarb, sugar and sand asked for lighter fluid!

I just googled it and I clicked on an article I found

Hopefully the metho will just be surface burns then (although still traumatic! Not trying to downplay it). I was imagining those poor kids covered in burning sugar and lighter fluid. So awful no matter what it was.

RosalieL wrote: ↑22 Nov 2022, 13:15 Hopefully the metho will just be surface burns then (although still traumatic! Not trying to downplay it). I was imagining those poor kids covered in burning sugar and lighter fluid. So awful no matter what it was.

I think one of the children is in a really bad shape. They had to be airlifted to hospital and this morning they said their condition "was now stable". I reckon the sugar has stuck to their skin. Not good at all.

Geeez those poor kids. I hope they recover quickly. Teacher would be feeling terrible right now, I feel for all of them. Hopefully they can have some learnings out of this horrid experience.

My head teacher says that Primary Schools are not allowed to do experiments with anything that's not edible . So using Metho is a breach straight up .

Which could explain why so many year 7 kids are always asking if they can eat everything .....to much molly coddling

bigmack wrote: ↑25 Nov 2022, 08:53 My head teacher says that Primary Schools are not allowed to do experiments with anything that's not edible . So using Metho is a breach straight up .

Which could explain why so many year 7 kids are always asking if they can eat everything .....to much molly coddling

That's interesting! And yes, explains a bit about why they don't have respect for science chemicals! Surely as a demo it wouldn't have to be edible, would it?