Saad Sarwana - Legendary Chemistry

 

 

My guilty conscience was making my heartbeat so loud. It was almost about to jump out of my chest. I was standing in the principal's office with my friends, and it was possible we were about to get expelled. I only had one person to blame for this. My chemistry teacher, Mr. Jabbar. [audience laughter]

 

It all started a few weeks earlier. Me and my nerdy friends, they were discussing how the cool kids would probably pull off a high school prank in one of the last few days of school. Someone said, “We should do one too,” and we immediately started brainstorming. That's when I remembered something my chemistry teacher had said way back early in the semester while reminiscing about the good old days. 

 

He was saying he used to do an experiment where he mixed iodine with ammonia to make these crystals. When you step on them, they pop. It was a really fun experiment, but the loud noises were too distracting, so he wasn't allowed to do it anymore. So, he said, “We should do that.” [audience laughter] So, this was pre-Internet-day, so we didn't know where to get the materials or what ratios were involved, but we did have access to this. [audience laughter] We did have access to this one book, which would help you find anything or almost anything, you might have used it when you were younger. It's called the Yellow Pages. [audience laughter] So, we looked under chemicals and we found industrial chemical wholesale. [audience laughter] That sounded right. [audience laughter]  We gave it a call. No caller ID. Do you have ammonia and iodine? “Sure, how much do you want?” We hung up. [audience laughter]

 

So, it was a business-to-business place. It was in the industrial wholesale area. A couple of kids couldn't just walk in and get chemicals from them. So, we found a piece of stationery from a pharmacy and we wrote on it, “One bottle of ammonia, one bottle of iodine.” [audience laughter] Since I looked innocent enough at that time, I was asked to go in. My hand was shaking. I gave it to the guy, I said, “My dad asked me to pick this up.” [audience laughter] He didn't even flinch. He just handed me the things, and he's like, “All right.” [audience laughter]

 

So, the next day was the penultimate day of school. We came in super early. We got some plastic glasses and plastic spoons from the cafeteria. We mixed the two mixtures in. We could see the crystals form as we stirred the mixture. We poured these crystals on the asphalt blacktop. These purple crystals were almost, like invisible. Being nerdy people, we had to try it out. So, we stepped on it. Nothing. We stepped on it again. Nothing. Finally, we heard a barely audible pop from the edge of the spill. And so, we thought we might not have used enough. So, we mixed the entire batch and poured it all over this area. [audience laughter] Now, this area connected two school buildings and is swarming with students as they go in between classes. [audience laughter]

 

So, in preparation for this, I looked up what happens. And it's a very common science experiment. What happens is ammonia reacts with iodine to form nitrogen triiodide. And in the wet form, the crystals are completely stable. It's only when they dry up is when they become unstable. [audience laughter] There are also warnings online, “Not to use more than a gram of iodine.” [audience laughter]

 

So, we poured this in the blacktop. We went into first period. When we were in first period, the sun came out and the crystals began to dry. Imagine the loudest thunder you've ever heard of- [audience laughter] -and then double it, and you still won't even get close to how loud it was. Because once the first period bell rang, people stepped on it, and bang, bang, bang. And teenagers, being teenagers, were deliberately stepping on this. [audience laughter]

 

But what had happened was, by this time, there were sections-- only sections had dried up and other sections were still wet, and the wet sections were getting stuck under people's shoes. [audience laughter] They were then becoming carriers and moving it to other parts of the school- [audience laughter] -where inside buildings, you would hear just a deaf-ish bang. Our prank had worked. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]

 

It had worked a little too well, because everyone wanted to figure out who was responsible. It was pretty easy. It was the people with the iodine stains on their hands. [audience laughter] We were caught purple handed. [audience laughter]

 

So, there we were in the principal’s office. She was really angry at us. But since we were good students, she said, “You know, you have to leave immediately.” They called our parents. We went home. We were grounded. We couldn't talk to our friends. But she allowed us to come back for the last day of school. So, I didn't talk to my friends. I walked into the last day of school, and the first thing that happens was one of the hot girls, she comes up to me as soon as I'm walking in, she's like, “Did you do that?” I'm like, “Yeah.” Getting ready to apologize. And she is like, “That was so cool.” [audience laughter] I am not kidding. I have won academic awards in school, but I was never congratulated by my peers. [audience laughter] But after this, I had strangers come up to me and high five me. [audience laughter] I don't even know if the cool kids pulled off a high school prank that year, because for those final days, we were the cool kids. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause] I guess the point I'm trying to make is, if you have an opportunity to do something with no consequences, do it. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause] You might just become a legend. Thank you.