Ermagawd! School science experiment opens the gates of Hell!

This stunning little clip did the rounds a while back, but I have such a backlog of cool things to blog, and I know this one is in there somewhere. So as it's doing the rounds of social media again, there's no time like the present...

This chemical reaction makes a pretty impressive pyroclastic volcano analog. But that's only just the beginning!


According to The Daily Dot, one of the Polish creators of this abomination described it thus:

We've mixed two well known chemical experiments. Chemical Volcano + Pharaon Snake. Chemical Volcano is burning of NH4Cr2O7 which makes porous, green Cr2O3 as a product. Inside volcano we've hidden 4 tablets with HgSCN. This chemical burns producing N2 which is making a foam 20 times bigger than initial tablet.

It's all very well to know how they let the beast out, but how the hell do they get it back in??


I've also seen the chemicals described elsewhere as Ammonium Dichromate ((NH4)2Cr2O7) and Mercury(II) Thiocyanate (Hg(SCN)2). One of them must be wrong, but it's been too long since I did chemistry for me to know one way or the other. Besides, the chemistry I did was never this awesome!

Here's another example of just the second part of the combination: