An Explosive Education

Phosphorous 1, Car 0

I remember the time I was in high school, Stadium High in Tacoma, where we had a good teacher, Miss Campbell, who taught chemistry. Of course all teachers seem ancient to their pupils. (I dug out my copy of our yearbook and she must have been all of 40.)

Miss Campbell had a very raspy voice caused, I suspect, by having to put up with the noxious fumes generated over the years in her classroom, which was really a laboratory.

Unlike most high school teachers of that era she had a master’s degree and had a somewhat arch accent, sort of like the ones movie stars had at that time. The degree, along with her raspy Hollywood voice, set her a bit apart from the rest of the faculty.

She encouraged experimentation, watched carefully as we mixed elixirs, potions and brews, at the ready to jump in if things got out of hand. We learned and had a lot of fun at the same time: a time-proven formula to inspire students. And she was the adviser to the science club of which I was a member. Wherein the tale.

One of us, I don’t recall exactly which but I suspect it was Harvey Wegner, decided that we could create a real good bang out of materials at hand. One afternoon we raided Miss Campbell’s cupboard and made a witch’s brew consisting of, among other things, a very volatile phosphorous, aluminum nitrate (and God knows what else).

We tried it in the teachers’ parking lot, putting the mixture, without the catalyst, on the hood of Miss Campbell’s car where, to our delight, it exploded. Unfortunately it blew out nearby windows and summoned the principal, who was not amused with the experiment.

In retrospect I wonder how we escaped unharmed. It was a hell of a bang.

Miss Campbell took full responsibility. And marveled how the explosion had not only dented her hood but had actually stretched the steel.

Oh yes, we all got A’s.

We graduated and after a year or so in the military went on to science-related careers.

Merle Legg became professor and head of the department of pathology at Harvard Medical School, Harvey, director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory. WOW! All of us at least partly inspired by Miss Campbell.

Who, had she been teaching today, would probably have lost her job…

Bob Winskill ‘43

(this was taken from an article written by Bob in the "Marin Scope" a newspaper in Marin county California...the article was entitled "An Explosive Education")

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