I’ve done the “how fast does it take for a matchbox car to melt in the fireplace” experiment;
the “does Barbie burn or melt” experiment;
the “dent the rear quarter-panel of the car with a ball peen hammer, then try to knock it back out from the inside” experiment;
the “set the model boat on fire, release it in the Delaware River, and see how far downstream it’ll go before it burns out or sinks” experiment;
the “cover the Evil Knevil doll in model glue, rev up his bike, set him on fire and see how far down the road he’ll go” experiment;
the “open up 25 shotgun shells and make a line of gun powder to a pool of gasoline to see if it’ll look just like the Bugs Bunny/Yosemite Sam cartoon” experiment;
and the “tape the younger brother’s mouth shut, tie him to a chair, lock him in a closet and see how long it takes for someone to find him” experiment.
Now I got a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and 74 planes to fool around with!
It involves a short story (groan). When we moved into the house we are now in, it was about 100 degrees outside (fourth of July weekend) and we have no air conditioning. Well, the sun is shining brightly on our walk leading to the front door, and the news comes on. Commentator makes a comment that it’s hot enough to “fry and egg”. Knuckle dragging SO (thanks Shirley! Love the description! :)) decides to show son who is 9 that it really will work (sidewalk hot enough to fry egg ==> let’s try it!) Breaks 2 eggs onto walk. They kinda sat there, looking icky. For a few days. Never did cook, but you should’ve seen the ants! I finally had to clean it up. He figured it was too “gross” and what was I thinking to let him do something idiotic like that.
tied a piece of buttered toast to the belly of my cat, butter side towards the cat…and dropped to cat. logic was to explore the the power of the toast to turn itself butter side down vs the cat to land feet first…
will the cat and toast reamain in the air, spinning, each side fighting to land in their usual manner.
Too late evilbeth, I saw it. Lexicon, what did you use? Go to my “is it safe to dye my cat thread” and let the hilarity ensue. One of my last posts said my intentions.
Anyway, for the op, I did a lot of fire expirements. I mixed ammonia, gasoline and toilet cleaner all together becuase it specifically said not to do it. It made some nice “purty” fumes. They didn’t become visible until I set them outside and set them on fire. Now that was interesting. A large flame of fire and some really nice green smoke rose from the coke can that was containing the fluids.
I made a roller coaster at a house where we lived. (I was 11, my sisters were 8 and 5) It was a kiddie lawn chair with arms that connected to the chair. My little sisters and I were convinced that we were going to get rich off the other neighbor kids for riding our rollercoaster. Anyway, I strung a rope through the arms and tied it to some pipes on the roof of the house and then to the bottom of the tree about 40 feet away at a 30ish degree angle. Then my younger little sister and I put my youngest sister in the chair (the rope acted kind of like a seat belt) and my younger sister pushed her off the roof. I was on the ground by that time. She spun around upside down got a nasty rope burn on her legs and got stuck in the middle. I had to go inside to get several stacks of chairs to get her down since she was still to high for me to reach her. Needless to say we didn’t make any money off of our rollercoaster.
My younger sister once made chocolate cheese. I can’t express how nasty that crap smelled. She had made chocolate milk and covered it over with a washcloth (this was about the same age) and hid it behind the tv on our entertainment center. Well, several weeks or months later I was cleaning the living room and found it. The washcloth covered the smell up almost completely. (having an inside dog helped too… can’t be sure if the dog smells or if it was the spoiled milk). Well, I saw it was a glass so I was going to wash it and when I picked it up I just knew something was wrong. I took off the washcloth (mistake one), and before I thought about anything else I smelled it (mistake two), I almost threw up right there and was going outside to dump it (mistake three, it intensified the smell) and saw that it was all clumpy and hard (mistake four) which made me throw up repeatedly. I was yelling at her later for that and she said she was trying to make chocolate cheese. The sad thing is that I understood her reasoning and didn’t get her in trouble with our mother at the time. (It would have gotten her in trouble too. The glass had to be thrown away and my mother was very poor at that time.)
There are so many, but those are just the ones off the top of my head.