What causes pens to explode? Is it the fact that I chew them down past the ink cartridge, or is it the aliens?
It’s not the aliens you fool!
It’s the [sub]illuminati[/sub].
Uh oh, now you’re in trouble, Sue. You know the illuminati come after you if you talk about them.
Crap! Now I talked about them too!
Well, it kinda’ depends on the ink cartridge.
Some Bic’s have pressurized ink cylinders. They look kinda’ like this:
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which rely on the viscosity of the ink and a snug ball point to act like a gasket. If you puncture them ink will actually squish out (used to love doing that when I was a kid). They also act funky in pressurized atmospheres, like airpanes.
The regular plastic tube o’ goo you get in most ball point pens can also be made to leak by gentle nibbling on the pens. I think the chewing screws with the pressure inside the body.
When I was in the eighth grade, I managed to have a pen leak all over my face and mouth. I was casually nibbling the ball point end during a boring lecture, and suddenly everyone was laughing at me. It was an exact re-enactment of “Ernest Goes To Jail”, when he was in the court room. God that was embarassing… I’ve also discovered that you can suck the ink out of pens(just an experiment), but now that I know what ink tastes like, I’ve never pulled an Exxon since.