fandomhigh | Chemistry You Can Use, Friday, Period 1

After waiting for the last students to arrive, Tyler shut the classroom door and briskly handed out copies of the syllabus. "Good morning, glad to see you all came back," he said. "First, that's your syllabus for the semester and the class rules. Don't get too attached to the syllabus part -- I might get bored and change it. But you might wanna start thinking about your midterm. It's about six weeks off, and you're going to be designing and executing your own experiment for it. We'll talk more when that's closer."

He indicated the paper mache volcanoes set on a lab table. "Right, yesterday Ino and Rikku, your TAs, gave me a hand and built those model volcanoes. Today we're going to make them explode."

"What you're going to do is put a good palmful of baking soda into the water bottle inside the volcano, then slowly pour in about a cup of vinegar. You can tint the vinegar with food coloring if you want it to look more like real lava. This is a basic acid-base reaction -- the acid of the vinegar and the base of the baking soda react and release carbon dioxide. The result is ... well, you'll find out. But first, let me explain what an acid is and what a base is." He did so, presenting a brief ~~and handwavy~~ lecture.

"We only have six volcanoes, so you guys get to work in pairs. Let me know if you have questions."

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"San Francisco, California and I think it's 2021 at home now," Chris said.

"Wow," Tony said. "You don't happen to have a book of hockey scores back home, do you?"

Chris laughed. "I'm pretty sure that could unmake existence or something," he said. "Haven't you ever seen ~~Back to the Future~~?"

"Point," Tony said. He looked at the volcano. "How are you at blowing things up?"

"Not as good as my mom," Chris joked. "But I think I can manage."

Tony raised his eyebrows. "Your mom blows things up?"

Chris smirked. "Yeah. With her hands. She's a witch."

"That's... wow," Tony said. He was torn between the coolness of being able to blow things up with your hands (and wondering if he could learn that) and the horrifying image of his own parents with power. "Must've made an interesting childhood."

"My brother and I were raised by our grandfather," Chris said with a shrug, not wanting to get into the whole story. "But an alternate universe version of my mom graduated from here a few years ago and I've gotten to know her."

"Sounds very Return to Tomorrow," Tony grinned. "I hope she didn't hit on you when you met."

Chris made a horrified face. "No, mostly because my brother has a big mouth and called her mom almost immediately."

"Probably saved you from having to play guitar at the Underwater Prom just to protect your own existence," Tony said.

"Which is a good thing, because I couldn't play a guitar to save my life," Chris said with a laugh.

Tony grinned. He picked up the baking soda. "Ready to make a volcano cocktail?"

"Ready as I'm ever going to be," Chris said.

Tony shook a palmful of baking soda into his hand and dumped it inside the volcano, then gestured for Chris to bring the vinegar.

Chris grabbed the bottle and opened it, wrinkling his nose at the smell.

"Wait, we should add some food coloring," Tony said. "What color is our volcano?"

"Um, let's do green," Chris suggested.

Tony added yellow and blue food coloring to the volcano. "Okay, go!" he said.

Chris poured in the vinegar carefully, not wanting to overdo it.

Tony took a step back, not sure how much of an explosion to expect.

Chemistry You Can Use, Friday, Period 1

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