4 students hurt, 1 seriously, in Denver lab fire

[hunter]

10. I support your comparison to sports.

Without the chemists nobody would be watching football on television or drinking inexpensive mass market beer.

Chemists like to play with fire just as football players like to crash into one another.

Sometimes there are accidents. Sometimes they are caused by negligence, but most often it's the very nature of the sport.

Book learning alone is not the way to teach science or sports.

I hope everyone walks away from this accident without any permanent damage.

I've seen some spectacular lab accidents, fortunately the sort that did no permanent damage to anyone.

The funniest accident I saw was in a university hallway past midnight. A door opened and two researchers ran out. The door closed itself behind them and then there was a big "WOOOOOOOOMP" with smoke billowing out from under the door. The researchers grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran back in.

I peered into the smoke filled lab and there were just the two of them, the fire was out, and they were grinning like idiots so I guess no serious damage was done to their experiment, the lab, or themselves. As scientists they were probably surveying the damage in that order.