I never knew my middle school chemistry class would save 350 people from a fierce cold and hunger.
This is a real story that I experienced in 2014, during our school camping trip.
“Mr.Hildreth, the electricity is out”, said John the senior representative.
“John, use this megaphone to tell everyone to stay inside their tents”, said Mr.Hildreth while quickly handing him an old red megaphone.
“Attention please, all students and visitors must stay in their tent until the emergency power source runs!”, yelled John with his cold, red face.
My friends and I were staying inside the tent, waiting for them to give us another announcement that the alternative power source runs properly. Stormy, windy, rainy weather on top of negative 17-degree Celsius made me and my friends’ hands red. Because we didn’t want to suffer from frostbite, all of us took our phones out and turned on the flashlight. We found the heat coming out from our phone batteries extremely thankful.
1 hour passed. We were still waiting for John to announce that the power machine is running properly.
Our phone batteries were running out and nobody was giving any signal. The weather was getting colder and there was no light. I watched Mr.Hildreth and campsite staffs trying to figure out the problem with the emergency electrical power source but they too were struggling with the unbearable cold.
Not surprisingly, my friends and I couldn’t stand the cold anymore, so we decided to take out all of our clothes and cover the tent’s floor. The clothes-layer was supposed to keep our body heat.
While I was taking out my blue jumper, I found a McDonald’s paper bag full of mustard and ketchup packages.
At that moment, a lightbulb turned on in my head.
I remembered my middle school chemistry teacher saying that mustard contains vinegar which produces hydrogen gas when reacted with magnesium. I thought it was possible to make a fire with hydrogen gas.
I stopped taking out the clothes and looked for any sort of metal. I couldn’t find one but my friend’s bike chain. With my friend’s approval, I started to cut some metal pieces from the chain with the knife we used to cut the roast beef that we had for our dinner. It took me a solid 30 minutes to cut out some small metal chain pieces.
After the struggle to cut out metal pieces with a roast beef knife, I carefully unwrapped the first mustard package and mixed it with the metal pieces that I got from my friend's bike chain.
It worked. It ACTUALLY WORKED.
It was extremely bubbly and I could feel the heat coming from the bubbles.
On that day, although the electric power source didn’t run properly, all 350 students and school staffs could spend their night warm because of the hydrogen gas that I made out of mustard and my friend’s bike chain. After the rain stopped, we eventually succeeded in creating a giant bonfire and all of us used that fire source to turn on all the analog lamps and candles we had.
6 AM, my friends and I were sitting around the fire with our torn bike chain, a McDonald paper bag and a beef knife lying next to us.
It was one hell of a night.
