Burning Chocolate Is (Totally) Allowed

On Monday, I went to an after school taster day at a Sixth Form College, and I tried an amazing lesson of English Lit/Lang, as well as a wonderful Physics lesson.

Basically, we were looking at the topic of waves (interestingly, something that I have not studied before) and our teacher gave us some equipment to calculate the speed of light: a microwave without the rotating plate thingy, a normal ceramic plate, and a bar of chocolate.

Interesting, right?

Anyway, we were supposed to place the chocolate on the plate, then put it in the microwave. Because it was not rotating, the waves hit two points, and therefore burnt (slightly) two points on the bar. If we measured this distance and multiplied it by the frequency of the microwave, we would have a rough estimate of the speed of light.

Oooh, science. And, by the way, *Do try this at home☺️

So, in our little group, we put the chocolate in the microwave and I turned it on (to 30 minutes because I don't understand how microwaves that aren't mine work) and we let it cook for a couple of seconds.

Only it then started to smoke and spark and we had to very quickly pull the chocolate out before it (probably) exploded. Oops.

However, as Science is basically setting things on fire, our teacher wasn't fazed. He just kinda laughed at the massive burn marks on the chocolate bar and told us to calculate the speed of light (we weren't far off either- impressed?)

More fire science stories though: once, a couple of boys in my class turned on a hairdryer and it started sparking. Properly sparking and mini flames started to appear before they turned it off (so clever)
And I had one teacher who was doing Bunsen burner safety with us (we were probably evaporating stuff or something), and she managed to set her hair on fire. The whole corridor smelt for weeks.

While this is fun and all, I have a confession: I'm writing this to put off the fact that I'm going to visit another sixth form tomorrow. I don't really want to go. At all. But yeah.

And so I leave you with this inspirational quote (to do with fire, of course) by Cormac McCarthy: "Keep a little fire burning: however small, however hidden."

Keep your fire burning everyone, go out there and change the world!

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