The long, cold shower

Again in my freshman year at Rutgers, more fun with chemistry. My roommate Larry was taking a chemistry class and learned about acids. He was scared to death of touching any. We told him that it was inevitable that he could eventually touch some in chem lab, which he hated.

So we decided to have some (more) fun with him, at his expense of course! I got some concentrated sulphuric acid from my chem lab class and brought it back to the dorm. We liberally sprinkled it on some of his dirty blue jeans, and waited for holes to appear. Much to our chagrin, nothing happened…………….. nothing at all! We were confused and disappointed to be sure.

However, we got our jollies a few days later when Larry finally washed his jeans. They came out of the dryer festooned with what looked like bullet holes from the waist to the cuffs, literally hundreds of holes.  Larry showed us in puzzlement, and as soon as any of us were able to recover our breath from laughing, we told him and he must had gotten a lot of acid exposure, and he should stand in a shower immediately for at least an hour. Sadly we told him, only COLD water would be effective in purging his system of the deadly chemical. I don't know which was the most fun, seeing his swiss-cheese pants or watching him shiver in a shower for an hour! 

For those of you who wonder, yes, I did go to classes, and yes I did graduate, and no, I don't torture small animals for fun.