Explosion in the Lab

I don't know if this counts as an explosion, but it's the very first time I ever witnessed something like this.

During Food Chem lab today we were doing some distillation experiment to study the nitrogen content in red snapper fish using the Kjeldahl method..... Whatever I don't think you care about the procedure anyway haha.

So you know when doing distillation, we heat one flask containing liqud and the vapour goes up through a U-tube and passes through a condenser so that the vapour will be condensed back to liquid again and drip into a receiving flask containing acid. Wow I'm good at stringing together long sentences XD.

OK so all of this was assembled in the fume hood (like a cupboard covered with a sliding glass door). Thankfully there was the glass panel, becoz the U-tube from my apparatus just exploded! OK technically it didn't explode, but I think the pressure from the gas or maybe it was over heated.. somehow the U tube just shot up so forcefully into the air that it hit the ceiling of the hume food and burst! No kidding!! Needless to say there was a super loud bursting sound and the solution in the flask erupted everywhere... like a mini volcano hahaha.

I was talking with a friend when it happened, but my poor lab partner was standing right in front of the hume food. Must have been so scary. Like I said, thankfully there was a glass panel separating her from the tube, otherwise it would have been super dangerous!


I really don't know why stuff like this keeps on happening to me in Food Chem. Everyone else seems to be getting better experimental results than me ALL the time @_@. Like today no one else's flask exploded, so is that a sign that I shouldn't be doing science? LOL.

Maybe I should just go sell mixed rice in a coffee shop. Or work in McD and eat Oreo McFlurry EVERYDAY.... yum yum :P