I like putting the large type marshmallows in the microwave, turning it on high, and watch the marshmallow grow to amazing proportions. mundane, yes…pointless, yes, amusing, yes… smores anyone?
I did the bread-and-butter experiment once (I had already dropped the bread, therefore was not going to eat it anyway). Results were inconclusive (the dog got it).
** MSK ** I guess I misinterpreted your thread line idea. But, I will answer it the way I thought you meant first, when I started home schooling my two sons six years ago, we made our own thermometers and barometers to check out science experiments with weather forecasts. It was hilarious, both the making and the checking, finally science was fun for me!
The ‘pointless’ came when I was newly married the first time, I had a refrigerator that would clog with ice (shocking isn’t it??) and I didn’t really know how to defrost it and not spoil the food. So, I opened the door to the fridge and put a fan pointing at the freezer section with a pan of boiling water inside the freezer section.
It DID melt fairly quickly, but I had to keep replacing the boiling water (duh) and sometimes CHUNKS of ice would come off at a time hitting the floor. So I made a bit of mess, and by the time I was finished, the ice age had been tackled and the floor cleaned pretty thoroughly too!
Ok but don’t broadcast this around ok?
We have ants in our building at school. They get on my desk sometimes if I leave a coke or something on it. I like to turn my pencil upside down and take my eraser and bang it down on one ant at a time in a random manner and pretend that it is mortar shells hitting all around them. If they make it to a piece of paper and crawl under it, then they get to live.
I once sat a yellow creme filled pastry (afraid I’ll get sued if I name names, but it rhymes with Pinky) outside on my window sill to see what would happen. (Really, I don’t remember why I was so curious, but that’s beside the point.) It sat there for a week in the sun and wind and rain without seeming any worse the wear. No birds or bugs would touch its remarkably preserved form. It was a Lenin-pastry . . . embalmed perfectly by whatever ungodly preservatives are in its ingrediants. I couldn’t believe it. Nothing would eat it! Finally, I brought it in and threw it away. I was getting a little freaked out.
When I was young, about 8 or 9, I decided after Easter that I wanted my very own chickens. I took a (hardboiled) easter egg and wrapped it up in a sock and then put it under the couch next to a heat register where it would stay warm.
Not so long later I was given a lecture by my Mother that hard boiled eggs do not produce chicks.
Recently, doing so early spring planting, I presoaked three packages of seeds in warm water to help with germination. In the true spirit of science, and the fact that I had a pot of scorched coffee left over from breakfast, I presoaked half the seeds in coffee and the other half in warm water before planting. So far, I have not noticed any visible results.
I was tired of my scallions wilting before I got to use them up. Since they are sold roots and all, I decided to see what would happen if I left them in a cup of water. Well, not only did they stay fresh, but they grew bigger and made flowers! Now I have a jelly jar with fresh scallions sitting on my windowsill, all nice and fresh. I think I will take some outside and plant them in my garden this year, and see if they grow and have baby scallions. I bet I could save hundreds, no thousands, on my grocery bills growing my own scallions 
Rose
I shaved my cat, and then dyed it dark green, and then we all went into town, and we walked to a Star Trek convention, and then we threw that cat in, and watched what would happen, but no one thought he was an alien, they all just laughed.
Weird, huh?
As a youngster a friend and I used to make potato firing mortars.
We’d take a length of PVC pipe, seal the butt end with a cap and lots of electrical tape, jurry-rig a simple “sparker” made from the metal clip and spring from a ballpoint pen attatched to a nine volt battery, squirt a small amount of lighter fluid within, jam a piece of potato inside, pull the string, Whooph!!
I used to try to move things with my mind. Star Wars inspired me to think that if I just tried hard enough, I could make the TV Remote fly accross the living room and into my hands.
I think my parents wanted to send me away for studying because to them, all I was doing was intensly concentrating on an object and grunting alot while I made funny faces.
Did I mention I was 8?
I always wanted to do the glowing pickle experiment. Where you plug a regular pickle into a wall socket and watch it glow then explode. Never did get around to it. I saw it done on Letterman though, so I know it works.
Don’t let Sqrl know that–he’ll be over here in a half-second asking how you did it!
Tried to cook a hot dog… Oh well, there are plenty of more pots out there…
as a child (and i certainly was an odd one,) i got this really cool book of experiments, so i opened to the page on the production of hydrogen gas. imagine, making my own balloons! so i got out some lye, water, aluminum foil, a plastic bottle, and balloon, and set the reaction into motion. soon, my balloon began getting filled up with more and more hydrogen, and i got excited. i tied up my balloon, and it went … down. hmmm… perhaps i wasn’t making hydrogen, after all. so i run to my dad, and ask him whether this balloon contains hydrogen or not? so of course,
as any good father would do, he turns on the stove, steps back and tosses the balloon at it. WHOMP! big orange fireball and all the pilot lights go out. “Yep, that’s hydrogen all right.” so what do i do, of course? i go to the back yard, increase my proportions of lye and foil, and start throwing this little bombs into a fire. my neighbors were none too pleased. needless to say, i wasn’t allowed to experiment with pyrotechnics again.
I used to launch model rockets, Estes brand. Once when sick, I attached an igniter to an engine (sans rocket), stuck it outside my window, clipped on the launcher electrodes, closed the window, and launched.
After I watched it bounce around my back yard, I realized how dangerous that was. So my next engine I put in an old latchable cigar box with the igniter wires sticking out and set that off inside my bedroom. The cigar box bounced around the floor and sulferous smoke filled the air. After the engine was spent, I noticed that the latch (a rather flimsy one) had popped open. Had the engine I used had an ejection charge, it would’ve probably popped out and hit me.
Then there is the one true experiment that if it works under labratory testing, will put my name up their with the greatest scientist, like the guy who discovered gravity: Fig Newton.
Training a lab rat ( knuckle dragging husband ) to put his dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Collect dirty dishes and put them under the covers of his side of the bed. Wait for him to say, " WFT?" when it’s time for the Rat to go to bed and then cackle with glee as he trots them all down to the kitchen.
So far, the experiment has failed. The Rat zonked out on the couch from an ESPN overdose or cheats and snuggles in next to me on my side.
Notes to myself: Experiments to try on said rat: leave a trail of beer and shelled peanuts (favorite of test subject) from dirty dish to open dishwasher.
i used to mix every type of liquid i could find in the house and fill up those sample perfume test tube like bottles with them. Then i’d bring them to school and dare people to drink them and see what happened. Nothing ever happened except one friend of mine puked up his egg salad sandwhich on smelling a vial once. 
Oh about 20 years ago, being young and foolish, I hosted a mundane pointless experiments party. (Can’t remember what I called it, but the concept was the same.) Everyone had to come prepared to undertake an experiment. We had the Coke vs Pepsi test; did Palmolive dish soap make your hands softer; could you see yourself in the dishes; a wide variety of exploding items; Q-tips vs other cotton swabs. A real sicko brought green onions and Dentyne gum & Certs–the fresh breath/kissing tests were, well, enjoyable. Amazing creativity–I recommend it highly. Heck, maybe it’s time to schedule another one myself.
Old and foolish is good too.
I worked as an assistant at a .22 rifle range at Boy Scout Camp. Rifleman Merit badge wasn’t that popular so we had a lot of time during the day when nobody was at the range. I used to open up .22 bulletts and drain out the gun powder into a small compartment in my desk. When the compartment got full (it was about 1.5 inches wide by .75 inches tall), I dropped a lit match into it and was suprised at how tall the colorful flame grew… about 18 inches IIRC. It was pretty cool.
Ah the things we did to pass the time.
Other years at Scout Camp, when I was a counselor, we did all sorts of crazy things: Systematically stole different pieces of apparatus from the Waterfront, create new “creative” tools from old broken ones… broken axe handle was the “Attitude Adjustment Tool”, etc.
When I was 15, very bored, and home alone one evening, I did one of the stupidest yet most hilarious thing of life…
I was going through a pryomaniac phase in my early teens, so one night I got the not-so-bright idea of wrapping a 100% FULL aerosol can of starting fluid in newspapers. I placed the “bomb” inside a 55 gallon steel drum, on top of yet even more newspapers, lit it up and waited for the big show. Well, I waited, and waited, it seemed like forever, but was probably around 15-20 minutes. At this point, I became frustrated because my “bomb” hadn’t gone off, so I approached the drum to stir the fire with a stick. Just as I got within 3 feet of the drum, the aerosol can blew, sending a mushrooming fireball about 20 feet into the night air. The explosion was so loud, and the fireball so huge, that about at least a dozen neighbors from within a one block radius came to see what had happened! I didn’t get in trouble, but the neighbors didn’t think much of me after that, lol.
The next day, I went back out to the barrel and made a disturbing discovery. The base of aerosol can had been blown off with such force as to emboss a perfect circle in the side of the barrel about 3/4 an inch in depth, outwards. Needless to say, my pyromania ended that day. My head could have been embossed instead of that drum. :eek: