Origin XT Blog

Did everyone at my school absolutely enjoy the fire alarm going off? High-five 5th Period AP Chemistry! In case anyone was wondering, the alarm wasn’t triggered by a malfunctioning fan as Mr. Woo said but by a combination of other things…

First off, we were vaporizing Ammonium Chloride (NH₄Cl), which has a sublimation point at approximately 500 degrees Celsius. Imagine the amount of smoke-like vapors given off by setting that on fire. Good thing we didn’t ionize it beforehand. Ammonium isn’t very pleasant to the nose, and Chlorine is just plain poisonous.

Those were not enough reasons for the alarm to go off. The vents not functioning was why. When I began vaporizing the compound, we began to notice a large accumulation of white cloud-like smoke collecting at the top of the room, and so, I asked Mr. Woo, “That’s a lot of smoke; shouldn’t we do something about it?”, to which he replied “Don’t worry, the vent will take care of it.”

And moments later the alarm went off, and Mr. Woo said “Oh, whoops, looks like the vent’s off… Ok kids, get out of the classroom for a while!” and we did. Immediately after doing so, he yelled, “Wait, go back in and turn off the bunsen burners! We can’t leave burning Bunsen burners in class unattended.”

While “evacuating” the building, I somehow was carrying one of the lighters/sparkers and people began questioning me about that. I swear, I had no connection with the alarm!

Anyway, we’re continuing the lab tomorrow with 2 people going at a time. How exciting!