Fictional Science Safety Story

One day in science class we were reviewing our WHMIS  and household safety signs to prepare for the lab that we were going to do the following day. they had mostly gone over household safety symbols such as explosive and corrosive   and were starting to go over WHMIS symbols starting with compressed gas.  Mr. Robinson asked the class what the symbol for flammable was, Jimmy pointed at this one. Mr. Robinson commended Jimmy for getting the answer right however bobby thought that the symbol that Mr. Robinson pointed to meant it was an irritant because if your skin gets irritated it can get inflamed. The next thing to do was prep for the lab that was going to happen the following day “Tomorrow we are going to be experimenting to see what happens when you heat hydrochloric acid with a bunsen burner at various heats and remember that next month we will be dissecting a sheep’s eye to kick off our unit on light and vision” said Mr. Robinson. Sandy didn’t like this, Sandy has always loved animals and hated the thought of animals being hurt for any purpose, because of this sandy is a vegetarian and will do everything in her power to avoid causing animals pain. So when she heard that they were going to dissect the eyes of sheep she became queasy at the thought. But she was excited because she was looking forward to eating her salad at lunch so she forgot about it.

The next day everyone was in the lab getting ready to start the experiment, because of the fumes of the acid they did the experiment under the fume hood in room 201. The experiment was started by taking the acid and pouring it from a funnel into a test tube, the test tube would be placed in a test tube stand over a bunsen burner. Everything was going well until Bobby grabs isopropyl alcohol instead of hydrochloric acid because he neglected to look at the WHMIS symbol on the bottle. He proceeded to pour it into the test tube (which is now about 750 degrees Fahrenheit) as soon as he did there was a perfect column of flame that rose from the test tube and caught Bobby’s lab coat sleeve on fire, Bobby wasn’t there on the safety day so he didn’t know what to do if he caught on fire so he proceeded to run around the lab waving his arms in the air and screaming. Luckily Jimmy knew exactly what to do, first, he said to Mr.Robinson very casually “Hey Mr. Robinson, bobby is on fire and so is his test tube, I think he put rubbing alcohol in it instead of acid.”  Then he got the fire blanket and jumped at bobby with his arms outstretched with the blanket in both hands. Jimmy wrapped the blanket around Bobby while Mr. Robinson extinguished the flame and other than bobby’s eyebrows getting singed off which made him a lot less motivated to ask that girl that he liked out on a date everything was fine and the day went on as planned.

The next day Sandy was having a good day until she remembered that she was going to have to dissect a sheep’s eye next Friday and so she asked her friend Jesse for some advice “Why don’t you just tell Mr. Robinson?” Jesse said Sandy thought it was a great idea and so she had gone by the classroom after school to tell Mr. Robinson how she felt ” I totally understand where you’re coming from Sandy, I have prepared for this scenario by making a backup assignment for anyone who doesn’t feel comfortable participating in the dissection, so if you don’t want to participate you will have to write me a 600-word essay on the importance of each part of the human eye” Sandy winced at the thought of having to write a 600-word essay and briefly considered changing her personal philosophy so she could avoid writing an essay but quickly snapped out of it and thanked Mr. Robinson for understanding. Once Sandy had left, Mr. Robinson sighed and reclined in his chair, closing his eyes for a brief second he said “I love my job”   

The End