Bunsen Burner

Had a fascinating chat with V. tonight after she got home from school about her chemistry lesson earlier in the day. 

It sounded as if it was pretty incident packed - a practical experiment involving hydrochloric acid and powdered marble - lots of near misses with spilt acid and overheated testing flasks. Her teacher sounds like a particularly patient man. However, it was when she started talking about how the students had heated up the flasks housing the acid/marble mixture that my interest was piqued as it seems that the old fashioned Bunsen burners - much beloved from my school days - are still very much in use and it seems that the design is pretty much the same.

Maybe I should not be surprised that the basic equipment - gas taps set into the lab counter and attached to the burner by way of a rubberised tube pulled over the narrow point of the tap with a splint used to light the thing after the tap is turned on - has not varied. However, in my day there was so much that could go wrong (or used incorrectly - I seem to recall one of our teachers using the rubber tube as a weapon on miscreant students on the basis that it would not leave any marks) that I assumed a safer design would be developed or at least the gas taps would have been made less easy to surreptitiously turn on whilst the teacher was engaged elsewhere (so that on when the lit splint was  rough near there would be a satisfying “whomp” as the build up of gas exploded). 

Apparently not. Good to see the old traditions are being maintained!