science experiment goes wrong

14 Experiments Gone Wrong

From psychological studies that would never pass ethical muster in the present day to disastrous new product launches, here are some experiments gone horrifically wrong, adapted from an episode of The List Show on YouTube.

1. Winthrop Kellogg's Ape Experiment

In the early 1930s, comparative psychologist Winthrop Kellogg and his wife welcomed a healthy baby boy they named Donald. The psychologist had grown interested in those stories of children who were raised feral—but he didn’t send Donald to be raised by wolves. He did the opposite: He managed to get his hands on a similar-aged baby chimp named Gua and raised her alongside Donald.

Gua initially did better than Donald in tests that included things like memory, scribbling, strength, dexterity, reflexes, problem-solving, climbing, language comprehension, and more. But she eventually plateaued, and it became evident that no amount of equal treatment was going to make her behave more like a human (for example, she was never going to be able to speak English).

But when the Kelloggs ended the experiment, they did so abruptly and without much explanation, which is contrary to the meticulous records they otherwise took throughout the course of the study. While Gua wasn’t showing any signs of picking up English, Donald had started to imitate the vocalizations of his sister from another species—so it’s not hard to speculate why the Kelloggs called it quits.

2. The Stanford Prison Experiment

You may have heard about the Stanford Prison Experiment, a social psychology study gone awry in 1971. The point of the experiment, which was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, was to measure the effect of role-playing and social expectations. Lead researcher Philip Zimbardo had predicted that situations and circumstances dictate how a person acts, not their personalities.

To start, 24 young men were assigned the roles of prison guard or prison inmate, with some held back as alternates. Each was paid $15 per day for his participation in the study, which was supposed to last two weeks. The prisoners were “arrested,” taken to a fake prison in the basement of a school building, then made to wear a dress-like prison uniform with chains around their right ankle.

By the second day, the faux prisoners had revolted. Over the next few days, some of the prisoners were so traumatized that they were pulled out. The experiment was disbanded on day six, after an outside observer witnessed the upsetting events taking place and sounded the alarm.

Many modern-day researchers don’t believe the experiment can be replicated because it doesn’t meet today’s research ethics standards—namely, informed consent. After all, it’s hard to give fully informed consent when there’s no way to predict how events could unfold. Beyond that, some psychologists doubt the core findings of the experiment and claim that the cruelty didn’t emerge organically, but was instead influenced by Zimbardo nudging the experiment in that direction. Zimbardo, however, has defended his results and stated that these criticisms are misrepresenting his study and the experiences of the people in it.

3. Franz Reichelt's Aviator Suit

If there's anything to be said for Franz Reichelt, it's that he had supreme confidence in his own invention. In the early 1900s, Reichelt crafted a parachute from 320 square feet of fabric, all of which folded up into a wearable aviator suit . He had conducted several parachute tests using dummies, which all failed. He pinned the blame on the buildings, saying that they simply weren’t tall enough.

In 1912, Reichelt planned to test his latest version by flinging a dummy from the Eiffel Tower. But when he arrived at the famous landmark, the inventor surprised the waiting crowd by strapping on the parachute suit himself and taking the leap. The parachute didn’t open, however, and Reichelt became a victim of his own invention. (An autopsy reportedly determined that he died of a heart attack on the way down.)

4. McDonald's Bubblegum-Flavored Broccoli

In 2014, McDonald's concluded that they needed to offer more nutritious options for children—which led one mad scientist in Ronald’s test kitchen to come up with bubble gum-flavored broccoli. Luckily for all of us, this horrifying experiment never made it to a Happy Meal near you.

5. William Perkin's Mauve-lous Mistake

In 1856, chemist William Perkin   was experimenting with ways to manufacture a synthetic version of quinine, a tonic water ingredient that also happens to treat malaria. At the time, dyes were only made from things like plant material and insects—but when Perkin was mixing up his latest quinine concoction, he accidentally produced an oily sludge that left a lovely shade of light purple residue. He had unwittingly discovered a way to produce mauve. The color was a smash hit, especially after Queen Victoria donned it for her daughter’s 1858 wedding. 

6. The Michelson-Morley Experiment

Another happy failure is the Michelson-Morley Experiment. The experiment was supposed to detect ether , a substance that carried light waves, according to some scientists. The working theory at the time, in the late 1800s, was that ether was motionless, so the motion of Earth through space would alter the speed of light depending on what direction you were facing.

This was popularly known as “ether wind.” To test the ether wind theory, scientist Albert Michelson invented a device that could theoretically measure changes to the speed of light, thus detecting the supposed ether wind. The device was perfectly accurate, but it didn’t detect any changes in the speed of light. What Michelson and his collaborator Edward Morley discovered—or rather, didn’t discover—eventually led to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, and the realization that the speed of light is a universal constant, and there is no absolute space or absolute time.

7. The Cleveland Indians' 10-Cent Beer Night

In 1974, the Cleveland Indians tinkered with a new promotion to increase game attendance—giving fans the opportunity to purchase an unlimited amount of beer for 10 cents a cup , which wasn't the best idea. The game against the Texas Rangers was an eventful one: memorable events of the evening included a woman running into the Indians’ on-deck circle and flashing the umpire; a naked fan running onto the field and sliding into second base; and a father and son who ran onto the outfield and mooned the bleacher section.

Things took a violent turn when fans launched fireworks into the Rangers’ dugout, and the whole thing eventually turned into an all-out riot, fans against players on both teams. Players were hit with folding chairs, there were numerous fist fights, and some players were injured when they were pelted with rocks. After that, the Cleveland Indians kept 10 cent beer nights, but limited the promotion to two drinks per person.

8. Stubbins Ffirth's Yellow Fever Experiment

Stubbins Ffirth was a medical student who believed that yellow fever wasn’t contagious. To prove it, he tried some awful experiments on himself at the turn of the 19th century.

Ffirth cooked vomit from yellow fever patients on his stove and breathed in the vapors. He dropped the vomit into his eye, into an incision he had made in his left arm, and put drops of a patient’s blood serum into his left leg. Eventually, he was basically drinking shots of black vomit—straight. (He described the taste as “Very slightly acid.”)

How did he Ffirth manage to ingest all of this without falling ill? Well, we now know that Yellow Fever is spread by mosquitoes. So maybe Ffirth was vindicated? Is this just a disgusting experiment gone right ?

Not exactly. We also know now that yellow fever can be spread from human to human through direct bloodstream contact, and Ffirth was deliberately introducing samples to his bloodstream. So how’d he avoid contracting the virus? It’s been proposed that he may have had an immunity from an unrecorded bout of yellow fever earlier in life. Or maybe he just got extremely lucky and the samples he used were virus-free. Either way, if you’re chugging vomit and cutting open your arm to introduce a potentially lethal virus, it’s fair to say that something has gone wrong.

9. Biosphere 2

In the early ‘90s, eight scientists sealed themselves into a 3.14-acre structure in Arizona. The highly-publicized, $200-million experiment was known as Biosphere 2, and according to one of the scientists involved, its goals included “education, eco-technology development and learning how well our eco-laboratory worked.” But the scientists ran into a number of problems that required outside interference in order to continue the experiment, including a lack of sunlight that affected crops, a cockroach infestation, an injured crew member who had to temporarily leave for treatment, and insufficient oxygen.

In recent years, however, the success of Biosphere 2 has been re-evaluated , with some scientists believing that the base message—that humans can live in harmony with our biosphere—was a win in and of itself. And even if the vast investment was viewed as a mistake, the underlying idea remains solid: Similar experiments have been recently conducted to see if we can sustain human life on Mars.

10. The New Ball

Although basketball was originally played with soccer balls, a leather ball has been used since Spalding began manufacturing sport-specific balls in 1894. The basketball has been tweaked here and there over the years, but the modifications apparently went too far when the NBA experimented with a microfiber ball in 2006. “The New Ball,” as it was commonly known, was cheaper to make and was supposed to have the feel of a broken-in basketball right from the start.

Sounds good in theory, but players absolutely hated it. Shaquille O’Neal, LeBron James, and Dirk Nowitzki complained about the ball to the press. One issue was that the ball apparently became much more slippery than a traditional leather ball when it was wet, which happened frequently when sweaty basketball players were constantly handling it. Some players even reported that their hands were getting cut due to the increased friction of the microfiber surface.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban also commissioned a study from the physics department at the University of Texas at Austin, which found that the ball bounced 5 to 8 percent lower than a traditional leather ball and bounced up to 30 percent more erratically. Feeling deflated, the NBA officially announced they were pulling the ball from play on December 11, 2006—less than three months after its debut in a game.

11. Henry A. Murray's Psychological Experiments

It’s probably safe to say that an experiment falls into the “gone wrong” category when it may have been responsible for producing the Unabomber. As an undergrad at Harvard in the late 1950s and early '60s, Ted Kaczynski participated in a three-year-long study run by Henry A. Murray that explored the effects of stress on the human psyche. After being asked to submit an essay about their worldview and personal philosophies, Kaczynski and 21 other students were interrogated under bright lights, wired to electrodes, and completely torn down for their beliefs. The techniques were intended to “break” enemy agents during the Cold War—and the students were never completely informed about the nature of the study. In short, the man who would eventually kill three people and injure over 20 more with his homemade bombs was subjected to repeated psychological torture.

Kaczynski later described this as the worst experience of his life; still, we can’t assume the study was solely responsible for sending him down the destructive and murderous path he eventually followed. But at the very least, the study is now considered highly unethical and likely wouldn’t pass current ethics standards for research.

12. Wilhelm Reich's Cloudbusters

Psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich managed to draw a straight line from human orgasms to the weather to alien invasion. Influenced by Sigmund Freud ’s work on the human libido, Reich extended the concept to propose a kind of widespread energy he called orgone. To give you an idea of how scientifically sound Reich’s concept was, orgone has been compared to the Force in Star Wars . This energy was supposedly responsible for everything from the weather to why the sky is blue. Reich believed orgasms were a discharge of orgone, and that through the manipulation of this energy you could treat neuroses and even cancer.

As bizarre as this all sounds, Reich went even further in the late 1950s, when he became convinced that aliens were spraying the earth with a specific type of radiation to prevent us from using this powerful energy. In order to save the world, he and his son built Cloudbusters, a row of tubes attached to hoses immersed in water and aimed at the sky. The water, they believed, would absorb the radiation.

Did the experiment work? We don’t know for sure, but the FDA didn’t think so. They ordered Reich's various machines and apparatus destroyed, and had him jailed for trying to smuggle them out of state.

13. Duncan MacDougall's Soul Experiments

In 1901, Duncan MacDougall conducted experiments on extremely recently deceased people—and dogs—to see if their body weight changed immediately after death. A decrease in weight, he theorized, would be indicative of a physical soul leaving the body. To test this theory, he weighed six people before and after their deaths, and concluded that there was a weight difference anywhere from half to one and a half ounces (somewhere between one and three compact discs). He repeated the experiment on dogs and found no difference—and therefore, by MacDougall’s reasoning, dogs have no souls.

Other scientists have been critical of this experiment from day one, citing issues like small sample size and imprecise methods of measurement.

14. New Coke

April 23, 1985, was a day that will live in marketing infamy. And that’s how Coke describes the failed experiment that was New Coke . On that day, the Coca-Cola Company debuted a new version of their popular soft drink made from a new and supposedly improved formula. It was the first major change to the product in nearly a century, and it was one that was supported by overwhelmingly positive reviews in taste tests and focus groups.

But once New Coke actually hit the shelves, fans were absolutely outraged. While the taste tests accounted for the actual flavor of the new formula, it couldn’t account for the emotional ties consumers had to the brand history. Fans started hoarding “old” Coke, and complaints poured in to the tune of 1500 calls a day. CEO Roberto Goizueta even received a letter addressed to “Chief Dodo, The Coca-Cola Company.”

The message was received loud and clear. Coke announced the return of Old Coke in July, dubbing it Coca-Cola Classic—and they never experimented with the formula again. Or if they did, they kept it to themselves, and we’re none the wiser.

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Science News

These are science’s top 10 erroneous results.

Mistakes from the past demonstrate the reliability of science

By Tom Siegfried

Contributing Correspondent

November 10, 2020 at 6:00 am

Astronomers viewing supernova 1987A, pictured here, thought they saw a signal from a rapidly spinning neutron star too bizarre to comprehend. But the signal turned out to come from a quirk in the electronics of a camera used to aim the telescope.

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To err is human, which is really not a very good excuse.

And to err as a scientist is worse, of course, because depending on science is supposed to be the best way for people to make sure they’re right. But since scientists are human (most of them, anyway), even science is never free from error. In fact, mistakes are fairly common in science, and most scientists tell you they wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s because making mistakes is often the best path to progress. An erroneous experiment may inspire further experiments that not only correct the original error, but also identify new previously unsuspected truths.

Still, sometimes science’s errors can be rather embarrassing. Recently much hype accompanied a scientific report about the possibility of life on Venus. But instant replay review has now raised some serious concerns about that report’s conclusion. Evidence for the gas phosphine, a chemical that supposedly could be created only by life (either microbes or well-trained human chemists), has started to look a little shaky. ( See the story by well-trained Science News reporter Lisa Grossman.)

While the final verdict on phosphine remains to be rendered, it’s a good time to recall some of science’s other famous errors. We’re not talking about fraud here, or just bad ideas that were worth floating but flopped instead, or initial false positives due to statistical randomness. Rather, let’s just list the Top 10 erroneous scientific conclusions that got a lot of attention before ultimately getting refuted. (With one exception, there will be no names, for the purpose here is not to shame.)

10.  A weird form of life

A report in 2010 claimed that a weird form of life incorporates arsenic in place of phosphorus in biological molecules. This one sounded rather suspicious, but the evidence, at first glance, looked pretty good. Not so good at second glance , though. And arsenic-based life never made it into the textbooks.

9. A weird form of water

In the 1960s, Soviet scientists contended that they had produced a new form of water. Ordinary water flushed through narrow tubes became denser and thicker, boiled at higher than normal temperatures and froze at much lower temperatures than usual. It seemed that the water molecules must have been coagulating in some way to produce “polywater.” By the end of the 1960s chemists around the world had begun vigorously pursuing polywater experiments. Soon those experiments showed that polywater’s properties came about from the presence of impurities in ordinary water.

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8. Neutrinos, faster than light

Neutrinos are weird little flyweight subatomic particles that zip through space faster than Usain Bolt on PEDs. But not as fast as scientists claimed in 2011, when they timed how long it took neutrinos to fly from the CERN atom smasher near Geneva to a detector in Italy. Initial reports found that the neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds sooner than a beam of light would. Faster-than-light neutrinos grabbed some headlines, evoked disbelief from most physicists and induced Einstein to turn over in his grave. But sanity was restored in 2012 , when the research team realized that a loose electrical cable knocked the experiment’s clocks out of sync, explaining the error.

7. Gravitational waves from the early universe

All space is pervaded by microwave radiation, the leftover glow from the Big Bang that kicked the universe into action 13.8 billion years ago. A popular theory explaining details of the early universe —  called inflation — predicts the presence of blips in the microwave radiation caused by primordial gravitational waves from the earliest epochs of the universe.

In 2014, scientists reported finding precisely the signal expected, simultaneously verifying the existence of gravitational waves predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity and providing strong evidence favoring inflation. Suspiciously, though, the reported signal was much stronger than expected for most versions of inflation theory. Sure enough, the team’s analysis had not properly accounted for dust in space that skewed the data. Primordial gravitational waves remain undiscovered, though their more recent cousins, produced in cataclysmic events like black hole collisions, have been repeatedly detected in recent years .

6. A one-galaxy universe

In the early 20th century, astronomers vigorously disagreed on the distance from Earth of fuzzy cloudlike blobs shaped something like whirlpools (called spiral nebulae). Most astronomers believed the spiral nebulae resided within the Milky Way galaxy, at the time believed to comprise the entire universe. But a few experts insisted that the spirals were much more distant, themselves entire galaxies like the Milky Way, or “island universes.” Supposed evidence against the island universe idea came from measurements of internal motion in the spirals. It would be impossible to detect such motion if the spirals were actually way far away. But by 1924, Edwin Hubble established with certainty that at least sone of the spiral nebulae were in fact island universes, at vast distances from the Milky Way. Those measurements of internal motion were difficult to make — and they just turned out to be wrong.

5. A supernova’s superfast pulsar

Astronomers rejoiced in 1987 when a supernova appeared in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the closest such stellar explosion to Earth in centuries. Subsequent observations sought a signal from a pulsar, a spinning neutron star that should reside in the middle of the debris from some types of supernova explosions. But the possible pulsar remained hidden until January 1989, when a rapidly repeating radio signal indicated the presence of a superspinner left over from the supernova. It emitted radio beeps nearly 2,000 times a second — much faster than anybody expected (or could explain). But after one night of steady pulsing, the pulsar disappeared. Theorists raced to devise clever theories to explain the bizarre pulsar and what happened to it. Then in early 1990, telescope operators rotated a TV camera (used for guiding the telescope) back into service, and the signal showed up again — around a different supernova remnant. So the supposed signal was actually a quirk in the guide camera’s electronics — not a message from space.

4. A planet orbiting a pulsar

In 1991, astronomers reported the best case yet for the existence of a planet around a star other than the sun. In this case, the “star” was a pulsar, a spinning neutron star about 10,000 light-years from Earth. Variations in the timing of the pulsar’s radio pulses suggested the presence of a companion planet, orbiting its parent pulsar every six months. Soon, though, the astronomers realized that they had used an imprecise value for the pulsar’s position in the sky in such a way that the signal anomaly resulted not from a planet, but from the Earth’s motion around the sun.

3. Age of Earth

In the 1700s, French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffonestimated an Earth age of about 75,000 years, while acknowledging it might be much older. And geologists of the 19th century believe it to be older still — hundreds of millions of years or more — in order to account for the observation of layer after layer of Earth’s buried history. After 1860, Charles Darwin’s new theory of evolution also implied a very old Earth, to provide time for the diversity of species to evolve. But a supposedly definite ruling against such an old Earth came from a physicist who calculated how long it would take an originally molten planet to cool. He applied an age limit of about 100 million years, and later suggested that the actual age might even be much less than that. His calculations were in error, however — not because he was bad at math, but because he didn’t know about radioactivity.

Radioactive decay of elements in the Earth added a lot of heat into the mix, prolonging the cooling time. Eventually estimates of the Earth’s age based on rates of radioactive decay ( especially in meteorites that formed around the same time as the Earth) provided the correct current age estimate of 4.5 billion years or so.

2. Age of the universe

When astronomers first discovered that the universe was expanding, at the end of the 1920s, it was natural to ask how long it had been expanding. By measuring the current expansion rate and extrapolating backward, they found that the universe must be less than 2 billion years old. Yet radioactivity measurements had already established the Earth to be much older, and it was very doubtful (as in impossibly ridiculous) that the universe could be younger than the Earth. Those early calculations of the universe’s expansion, however, had been based on distance measurements relying on Cepheid variable stars.

Astronomers calculated the Cepheids’ distances based on how rapidly their brightness fluctuated, which in turn depended on their intrinsic brightness. Comparing intrinsic brightness to apparent brightness provided a Cepheid’s distance, just as you can gauge the distance of a lightbulb if you know its wattage (oh yes, and what kind of lightbulb it is). It turned out, though, that just like lightbulbs, there is more than one kind of Cepheid variable , contaminating the expansion rate calculations. Nowadays converging methods give an age of the universe of 13.8 billion years, making the Earth a relative newcomer to the cosmos.

1. Earth in the middle

OK, we’re going to name and blame Aristotle for this one. He wasn’t the first to say that the Earth occupies the center of the universe, but he was the most dogmatic about it, and believed he had established it to be incontrovertibly true — by using logic. He insisted that the Earth must be in the middle because earth (the element) always sought to move toward its “natural place,” the center of the cosmos. Even though Aristotle invented formal logic, he apparently did not notice a certain amount of circularity in his argument. It took a while, but in 1543 Copernicus made a strong case for Aristotle being mistaken. And then in 1610 Galileo’s observation that Venus went through a full set of phases sealed the case for a sun-centered solar system.

Now, it would be nice if there were a lesson in this list of errors that might help scientists do better in the future. But the whole history of science shows that such errors are actually unavoidable. There is a lesson, though, based on what the mistakes on this list have in common: They’re all on a list of errors now known to be errors. Science, unlike certain political philosophies and personality cults, corrects its mistakes. That’s the lesson, and that’s why respecting science is so important to avoiding errors in other realms of life.

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More than 160 students, teachers nationwide hurt in science experiments gone wrong

by JOCE STERMAN, ALEX BRAUER and ANDREA NEJMAN, Sinclair Broadcast Group

WASHINGTON (SBG) — As many students return to in-person learning, experts are warning about a danger they could face in the classroom: not COVID-19 , but a phenomenon known as flame jetting. It's already injured dozens of students and teachers across the nation in classroom science experiments gone terribly wrong.

Spotlight on America got a firsthand look at the phenomenon known as flame jetting from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives , going behind the scenes at the agency's Fire Research Laboratory in Maryland. As trained and equipped representatives from the ATF demonstrated, the phenomenon can turn a flammable liquid inside a container into a flame thrower, creating a wall of fire that shoots forward with an intense force, torching anything in its path.

According to Jonathan Butta with the ATF, it can happen when alcohols, especially methanol, are used in demonstrations involving an open flame. While the idea is to liven up classroom experiments and give a real-life application to a chemical concept, the results can be tragic. Butta explained, "It essentially turns a typical flammable liquid container into a flamethrower."

"We actually see the flame front propagate up the stream of flammable liquid into that container and expand those vapors and shoot those liquid droplets out with it," said Jonathan Butta with the ATF.

Dozens of students across the country have actually seen flame jetting in action, with tragic consequences. W.T. Woodson High School in Virginia is just one example.

In 2015, a demonstration known as the "Rainbow Experiment" designed to show how burning different salts results in different colors, went wrong at the school. Experts say flame jetting occurred during the experiment, with the tragic outcome detailed in stunning photos . The incident left a classroom at Woodson High School charred and five students injured, including two who had to be airlifted to the hospital with serious burns. Just weeks after the incident, Nick Dache exclusively told our affiliate WJLA , "I think the whole thing was just a freak accident."

Dache actually stepped in to assist one of the students who was burned during the incident. As the young woman ran out of the classroom still on fire, Dache explained he chased her down and used his hands to scuff out the flames on her shirt.

"It almost looked like a blanket. Someone else described it as a fireball," student Nick Dache said of the aftermath of the Rainbow Experiment gone wrong in 2015. "I don't think that's completely accurate because that seems more violent. It got very widespread but it didn't seem super concentrated."

A similar flame jetting incident happened in Ohio in 2006, when student Calais Weber Biery was burned over 40 percent of her body during an experiment in her school's chemistry lab. She's featured in a 2013 Youtube video produced by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board called "After the Rainbow." The video, the organization said, was created in an effort to help prevent classroom accidents in chemistry labs.

"I remember thinking, 'I'm on fire, oh my gosh, I'm on fire,'" student Calais Weber Biery recalled in a Youtube video about the dangers of the Rainbow Experiment. "It's tragic and it shouldn't happen."

Spotlight on America has learned those two incidents are far from isolated. A 2018 study published in the Journal of Chemical Education , an arm of the American Chemical Society , found 164 children and teachers have been injured in classroom demonstrations using flammable solvents since 1988. Additionally, we discovered at least three additional incidents last year alone. Experiments where students and teachers have been injured have happened in the following states:

• North Carolina
• Pennsylvania

The real number of classroom accidents could actually be much higher because Spotlight on America has learned there's no requirement to report accidents to the US Chemical Safety Board , which along with the ACS, has done tremendous outreach, trying to improve experiment safety. In 2015, Kristen Kulinowski, a former member of the USCSB, talked with our affiliate WJLA about the number of accidents in classroom labs, calling them a significant problem. She said, "All of these incidents could have been prevented."

Courts in at least four states including Georgia, Florida, New York and Ohio have agreed, handing over millions in cases filed by students injured in fiery classroom experiments. In one of those cases , nearly $60 million was awarded to a high school student in New York who was badly burned and left with permanent scarring on much of his body as a result of an experiment gone wrong. The award was appealed but just this summer a judge upheld the jury's decision.

For years, some safety advocates have called for banning experiments involving flammable solvents and open flames altogether, while others have lobbied for mandating specific safety protocols to protect students in the classroom. For its part, the ACS has dedicated an entire section of its website to provide resources for educators on how to safely conduct demonstrations and experiments in the classroom. Their efforts even include showing teachers a safe, alternative way to conduct the Rainbow Experiment without putting students at risk.

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Science experiment gone wrong sends 18 students, teacher to Tennessee hospital

GALLATIN, Tenn. (AP) — A science experiment gone wrong at a Tennessee elementary school sent 18 students and a teacher to the hospital on Friday, officials said.

The third-graders at Vena Stuart Elementary in Gallatin were conducting science experiments with an outside presenter and several said they began feeling sick after an experiment with dry ice, news outlets reported, citing a statement from Sumner County Schools.

Several children became nauseous and school administrators called emergency responders, who transported the students and teacher as a precaution, Sumner County Schools' Director Scott Langford said in a video posted to social media.

The school statement said everyone transported was in good condition and Langford said they were all released later in the day.

Fire crews also assessed and ventilated the room where the experiment took place.

Langford said officials were thankful for the quick response from school administration and first responders.

“They acted quickly and our students are safe,” he said.

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Even “documented” immigrants will not be safe, because Miller has declared that he will pursue the seldom-used process of “denaturalization” to go after people who have been citizens for years or decades.

Sydney Thomas, a student at the University of Alabama, now has more than 627,000 followers on Instagram

Blow-Up Doll It's only been a few weeks since Elon Musk's money helped bring Donald Trump back to the White House — and already, the billionaire seems to be causing problems. According to insiders who spoke to Axios, Musk and Donald Trump's indicted lawyer Boris Epshteyn got into a massive screaming match at Mar-a-Lago last week […]

"I no longer feel like clawing my way inside my own body."

I took the same grocery list to Walmart and Aldi to see which chain had the better value, prices, and shopping experience ahead of Thanksgiving.

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Investigators were acting on a tip from someone at a rural Minnesota apartment construction site who noticed something unusual.

There's no place like home for the holidays, but forecasters say your trip over the river and through the woods this Thanksgiving could be impacted by a brewing winter storm.

Four executives have publicly said they'd raise prices for consumers if Trump enacts his proposed tariffs.

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After the first week of search efforts, Hannah Kobayashi’s family has only received one new detail to help them look for the missing Maui woman in Los Angeles. Family members said that over the weekend, they learned of a new last-known location for Kobayashi. The 31-year-old’s family confirmed on Monday that they saw footage of […]

I'm here to hear you out.

Trump has chosen former rival Vivek Ramaswamy and billionaire Elon Musk to dismantle government programs. From David Mastio:

The video has been viewed over 2.4 million times on X

The country star is the latest A-lister to share such a serious warning with fans.

Comedian and TV host Bill Maher butted heads with Star Trek actor and author William Shatner over whether Vice President Harris was a “great” candidate in a new podcast. Shatner joined Maher’s “Club Random” podcast in an episode released Sunday in which they discuss the presidential election and Harris’s defeat. “She was not a great…

The users aren't holding back.

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Cher and the late singer tied the knot in 1975

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"She asked, 'Is my bra in the way?' I said, 'Nah, don't worry about it.'"

Tens of thousands of people have marched on the New Zealand parliament in Wellington to protest against a bill that critics say strikes at the core of the country’s founding principles and dilutes the rights of Māori people.

Rest in peace.

We've all been there before.

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Okay... that is wild.

Mike Tyson, a boxing legend, and Jake Paul, a social media legend, threw down Friday in Dallas. Financially, they both came out winners.

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday formally lowered the threshold for Russia’s use of its nuclear weapons, a move that follows U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to let Ukraine strike targets inside Russian territory with American-supplied longer-range missiles. The new doctrine allows for a potential nuclear response by Moscow even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power. Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukraine fired six U.S.-made ATACMS missiles early Tuesday at a military facility in Russia's Bryansk region that borders Ukraine, adding that air defenses shot down five of them and damaged one more.

Sorry, but the laundry basket is blowing my mind. I want to know how a laundry basket can hold up for that long!

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"I have no idea what I'm doing."

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"To this day, I'm annoyed with myself that I never complained to HIS boss. But, I guess as a 17-year-old, I just didn't realize that was an option."

I have played the fast-growing sport of pickleball, and while I did get nailed in the face, it was because I hit myself in the face with my own racquet. But, no, pickleball is not a contact sport. Which brings us to a video shared by a Twitter accoun

Two hospitalized after science experiment goes wrong at CT high school, officials say

A student and a staff member were hospitalized after a science experiment malfunctioned and caused a dangerous gas leak at a Connecticut high school, authorities said.

Firefighters responded to the reported gas leak at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 13, at Berlin High School and evacuated students and staff, the town’s Fire Chief Jonn Massirio said in a news release.

The experiment used nitric acid and copper pennies to produce nitrogen dioxide in what was supposed to be a closed loop system, Massirio said.

“The malfunction involved a tube within the system breaking, causing the gas to enter the atmosphere,” he said.

Nitrogen dioxide can be harmful to the respiratory system , causing inflammation of the airways, coughing, wheezing and reduced lung function, according to the American Lung Association.

Two people, a student and a staff member, were taken to the hospital after feeling symptoms of dizziness and eye and throat irritation, according to the release. Fourteen other students were evaluated and released back to class.

“No one really knew whether it was a drill or not,” Katarina Pauley, a Berlin High School junior, told WFSB. “We later found out while we were outside, that one of the gas things that weren’t supposed to be pulled, got pulled and there was like a gas leak .”

Fire responders took the experiment outside, and the reaction subsided naturally, while the rest of the gas was cleared from the building using mechanical ventilation.

Students and staff were let back in the building shortly after, and the school notified parents of students impacted, Massirio said.

McClatchy News reached out to Berlin High School on Nov. 14 but did not receive an immediate response.

The two hospitalized have not been named, and no updates have been made on their health.

Berlin is about a 10-mile drive southwest from Hartford.

Science experiment explodes, severely burning 12-year-old, NC dad says. ‘Horrific’

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