Question: What was the worst thing that has gone wrong in any of your experiments?

Charlie Ryan answered on 14 Mar 2011:

good question – and i have a reaonably good answer!!
When i was in my final year at southampton university, i worked on a project building a chemical rocket. This used hydrogen peroxide, which as well as being the chemical that turns hair blonde, also when it is at a high concentration it is highly explosive (guess where this is going!).
We designed a rocket, got it built, and went to a field to test it. And of course as soon as we put the peroxide in the rocket the whole thing blew up, throwing shards of metal across the field! Some of the pieces went straight through a nearby caravan!
Somehow though i still got a pretty good grade for the project…