Education Through Pyrotechnics

A promising student, though just a learner,
Blew himself up with a Bunsen burner.
If only he'd had a little more ambition,

He might have done it with nuclear fission.

—Anon

There's no better way to make a lesson stick than by adding explosions. People in less-than-serious teen series picked up on that years ago.

Nothing on God's green earth is more volatile than the science laboratory materials of a fictional high school. Not even Tokyo. Experiments can be reasonably expected to combust, detonate, singe off a few eyebrows, scorch the ceiling, blow out windows, force the evacuation of that wing of the building and/or attempt to attack their creators. If they don't, the class Gadgeteer Genius builds a transdimensional collapsatron out of paperclips.

This is not in the least helped by the teachers, as this is a popular position for the Professor or Mad Scientist. Often they have left an university or a private research institution, possibly through the roof.

Examples of Education Through Pyrotechnics include:

Anime

• Ranma ½ does this, in early Season 1, right near the time Ryoga enters the scene. The Chem Club students want to get their hands on Akane and decide to make bombs, which they of course accidentally set off in the chemistry lab (and wind up setting off accidentally during the battle when the mines fail to go off during Ranma/Ryoga's fight).
• Magical Girl Pretty Sammy: This is the opening Washu took in order to study magic. Human in this Alternate Continuity, she nevertheless is the most powerful Mad Scientist in the world.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:Professor Daitokouji/Banner blew himself up at least once. His specific class is left hard to determine, as is every teacher's on that show, but appears to be alchemy (also his side job).
  • It is alchemy. When he was absent, Professor Chronos/Crowler took over and blew himself up as well.
• In Futari wa Pretty Cure, explosions seem to be a normal side effect of Honoka's experiments, as demonstrated twice in the first two episodes. And in her dreams. And in the intro.
• Satomi Hakase in Mahou Sensei Negima has done this at least once, exactly as the main group were entering her lab. Naturally done for humour with everyone only a bit blackened with a few hairs out of place.
• In Digimon Adventure 02, Miyako (Yolei) triggers an explosion that leaves her with an Ash Face.

Comic Books

• 'Archie Comics: A common situation at Riverdale High.
• Tintin. Happens twice in "Land of Black Gold". An oil executive is telling Tintin that he's confident his team of scientists will find the answer as to why petrol is exploding without cause, when one of them rings to report failure. Oh and if they want him to continue, they'll have to build a new lab! In the end Professor Calculus finds the answer, but only after destroying a large part of Marlinspike Hall, much to Captain Haddock's outrage.
• This is more or less a part of Spider-Man's origin. He attended a seminar on radioactive energy. The machines used produced a beam of radiowaves between two generators. The generators were not separated from the public, nor were they sealed off to avoid a random spider falling into the beam and biting a certain Peter Parker. In later retellings, an explosion occurred.

Film

• The parody Bullshot references this trope when Professor Fenton's ditzy daughter drops something in his lab, causing an explosion. "Careful Rosemary! That's how we lost mummy!" His mood changes however when it's revealed the explosion has produced the catalyst he's looking for.

Literature

• Percy Jackson And The Sea of Monsters: Spoofed in this children's book. The Weirdness Magnet main character goes to a relaxed, New-Agey school, and his chemistry final is literally "make something explode". Within five minutes, he and his lab partner succeed so spectacularly that the lab has to be evacuated, and the teacher praises them for their instinctive grasp of chemistry.
• Discworld:
  • The entire purpose of the Alchemist's Guild seems to be to accidentally blow things up. As one description put it, "Most of the time, the Alchemist's Guild was across the street from the Gambler's Guild. Other times, it was above it, or below it, or falling in small pieces all around it."

Their synthetic ivory is of particular note—unlike most endeavors, the process went swimmingly; they managed it in about a week. Unfortunately, the formula still needs fine tuning, as their billiards games keep getting interrupted by exploding balls. Amusingly, this is a very slightly exaggerated version of the real history of synthetic ivory. The first viable substitute for ivory in billiard balls was a mixture of nitro cellulose (guncotton), camphor, and acetone (very flammable). As guncotton ages it becomes more sensitive to percussion, and so every now and then... "I done seen it all, Sheriff. It were the cue ball what shot first."

• • Cheery Littlebottom, asked how she'd parted company with the Guild, replied as follows:

"Through the roof, sir. But I think I know what I did wrong."

• In Harry Potter's Hogwarts, things blowing up or catching fire is about the least harmful thing that can happen in a classroom. Spilled potions cause boils to sprout all over, or cause whatever they hit to swell to enormous size (whether that's hands, nose, eyeballs, you name it.) Then again, the explosion of the Swelling Solution was deliberate...
  • This is a big part of the reason why Hogwarts exists: underage wizards are expected to make mistakes and/or release accidental magic, and it's better to have them all in one place with competent adults to fix the disasters.

Hagrid:Yer expect accidents, don' yeh, wit hundreds of underage wizards all locked up tergether, but attempted murder, tha's diff'rent.

• The Dresden Files:
  • In White Night, Harry, under a lot of pressure and stressed to the eyeballs, gives into anger and tests Molly by seeing whether or not she can shield herself against a slow-moving fireball. He cancels the spell once he sees she's about to break down.
    • Keep in mind Harry himself admits he's not great at off the cuff magic that isn't big and violent. He'd been planning the ball of sunshine trick for awhile because Molly needed to be taken down a peg. His reaction to the stress and whatnot came a page earlier, where he liquified a metal garbage can and rained molten steel on a bunch of outfit-owned shops.
  • In Small Favor, Harry reveals that he and his Evil Mentor, Justin DuMorne, used to play catch as part of practice. With fireballs.

Live Action TV

• Occurs in several tales on Are You Afraid of the Dark?: A High School is haunted by the ghost of a girl who died in a lab explosion... The school Nerd defeats an evil water spirit (made of water) with manganite ("Mix water with manganite and kaboom!") and other chemicals from the school lab...
• Bill Nye the Science Guy embraced this trope. "And now, for a really big chemical reaction."..... BOOM. Bill once displayed the chemical formula for nitroglycerin. He then proceeded to drop the formula, and it exploded.
• MythBusters pretty much exemplifies this trope. No episode is complete without something exploding (for educational purposes For Science!, of course!). It was so popular, Discovery decided to distill the explosions into a new show--Smash Lab. Too bad they forgot that the success of MythBusters is due as much to the people who run it as the experiments themselves.
• Brainiac: Science Abuse: It doesn't matter what they're experimenting with, they're going to blow something up.
• Dead Gorgeous: In the first episode, Hazel causes a (small) explosion in the school lab despite her experiment seeming to involve nothing more dangerous than coloured foam.
• Family Matters: In an All Just a Dream episode, Laura dreamed that Steve Urkel built an atomic bomb for his science fair project.

Music Videos

• Inverted in the My Chemical Romance video for "I'm Not Okay", since they are shown in chemistry class and none of them manages to cause an explosion (though Gerard does smack himself in the face somehow).

Video Games

• Beavis and Butthead: Played with in Beavis and Butt-Head in Virtual Stupidity. "Are explosions science?" "In your case...no."
• Bully: You get a minor bang if you fail chemistry. Notably, if you succeed, you get the ability to make firecrackers. Bear in mind that the key ingredient in these, if memory serves, is black powder, isn't it?
• Escape From St Marys: Genre Savvy Mrs. Desai knows you're only in the chemistry lab to make bombs.

Web Comics

• El Goonish Shive briefly subverts this: in a setting rife with magic, weresquirrels, Hammerspace and people who seem unable to hold onto their gender for 24 hours straight, the science teacher is a completely ordinary person who's exasperated by the disrespect the main characters pay to the laws of physics. It should be noted, however, that the first real plotline in the comic was about a science experiment that had come to life and attacked, although when it came back to life a few plotlines later it was retconned to have been an attack by an interdimensional rival instead.
• Scary Go Round: One of the first plot lines of uses this trope.
• The Wotch has quite a messy science class.
• Miscellaneous Error features Jack nonchalantly telling his father about his typical school day, which includes blowing up chemistry labs.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons:
  • "Bart the Genius": Bart causes a classroom to fill up with green goo by mixing chemicals.
  • "She Of Little Faith" had an entire beginning where Homer teaches Bart and Milhouse how to launch a model rocket—with explosive results.
• On The Powerpuff Girls, Past!Utonium randomly mixed chemicals while goofing around in science class and accidentally set the school on fire.
• On American Dragon: Jake Long, Jake and Spud blow up the Huntsclan Academy lab while trying to brew a potion of dragon slaying.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender the teaching of fire-benders seems to involve lots of flame and explosions. But then.... they're fire-benders.
• Camp Lazlo: In "Sweet Dream Baby" the Jelly Beans manage to put their cabin into orbit with something they mixed up in a store bought chemistry kit.

Real Life

• Possible in some demonstrations in high schools, such as placing an alkali metal in water. Metals that react more energetically can shatter the container if too much is placed in it.
• Happens every so often in chemistry research labs, as can be seen on research chemists' blogs.
• Read this discussion. Go on, it's fun. You may have to scroll down a bit to get to the actual school pyrotechnics.
• Nitrogen Triiodide. Freakin' NI3. Staple of mischievous chemistry students and show-off professors across the world. Rather powerful crystalline explosive, sensitive enough to go off when a big fly lands on it. However, unlike most unstable stuff, it may be handled more or less safely upon mixing and is primed only when it dries up. Hence the popularity.

R.W.Wood's biography (which in itself is twice more entertaining than 9/10 of "Mad Scientist" fiction, and half again weirder) specifically mentions his nitrogen-iodine experiments. He was already pyro-savvy, so he split it into several little piles... and when he tested first dried pinch its explosion scattering a good spoonful of almost ready touch-sensitive explosive crystals through the entire room...

Once in Soviet times students in Voronezh University ladies' dormitory were quite annoyed by their porter due to her habit of night patrols. Enter the... Chemistry students and enigmatic faint smell of ammonia rising from the corridor's floor. Next morning she was found sitting atop her stool with boots. This little experience apparently taught her something valuable about wisdom of not sharing one's insomnia with everyone around and about peaceful coexistence with bunch of crazy students in general.

• The university Missouri S&T actually offers a minor in explosives. And they're not kidding. Seeing as how they were originally Missouri School of Mining and Engineering, or something like that, its hardly surprising.
  • They now also offer a Masters!
  • The New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology also has an explosives division. These guys are quite infamous around the town for setting off explosions that would probably cause air raid alarms if they were anywhere else. Shockwaves powerful enough to rattle windows are not unheard of, to the great amusement of the university's students.
• Purdue University professor George H. Goble won the 1996 Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his world record of lighting a barbecue in 3 seconds. He did this by dumping a 3 gallon bucket of liquid oxygen on 60 pounds of coals; the resulting fireball reached 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. For those curious to see what the fuss is about, here is a video, and photos and an interview.
• Training in US Army ROTC falls under a series of courses entitled "Military Science." By the time they graduate, a cadet will have worked with AT4s, Claymore mines, frag grenades and field artillery.
• The entire point of Thomas Gray's Mad Science
• John D. Clark's book Ignition! is a subversion - as a longtime researcher in liquid rocket fuels, he hoped to teach future researchers to avoid explosions by mentioning what could go wrong (Teflon "eroding like sugar in hot water" when they tried chlorine trifluoride, for one) Of course, it may have had the opposite effect.
• A classic chemistry experiment is corroding a penny using hydrochloric acid to separate the zinc from the copper and measure its composition. One day, a substitute teacher decides to do this experiment but sees they're out of hydrochloric acid. Figuring any strong acid will work, the teacher decides to substitute nitric acid. Any other strong acid would have subbed in just fine, but nitric acid doesn't work because nitrate is a stronger oxidizing agent than protons are, so instead of producing hydrogen as a byproduct, it produced poisonous NO₂. The school had to be evacuated.
• A middle-school science teacher attempted to demonstrate methods of identifying a metal by the color of flames when whiskers of the metals were ignited. They did this at their desk, over a pile of paperwork. The fire chief was less than amused.
• One chemistry lecturer would turn up to a particular lecture carrying 3 balloons and pick a guinea pig student to light them with a long taper. One contained pure oxygen, one pure hydrogen and one, a random mix of oxygen and hydrogen. Not so much fire, but explosions loud enough that other people in the building had called bomb squads in the past.
• In a strange blend of this and religion, in The Forties and The Fifties, there was a prominent preacher and professor who used gloves that zapped lightning during his sermons, mostly as a response to the whole Science versus Religion debate.