Hilarious Science Experiments Gone Wrong

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Hilarious Science Experiments Gone Wrong

By Monica Gray - February 28, 2023

This Scientist Thought Drinking Vomit To Experiment With Yellow Fever Was A Good Idea

In 1804, Stubbins Ffirth believed yellow fever wasn’t contagious. He wanted to prove this unprecedented opinion to the world by conducting hilarious experiments on himself during the 19th century. If you’re trying to prove something, the best way to test something safely is to start on yourself, right? It sounds like an awful idea. To do this, he cooked vomit from yellow fever patients and breathed in the vapor from the vomit. He dropped the vomit into his eyes and injected it with a small incision he made in his left arm. He also put drops of the patient’s blood serum into his left leg. Nearing the end of his experiment, he was taking rows of shots of black vomit, which has a slightly acidic taste. Ffirth didn’t catch yellow fever from the vomit, proving his point. But you can’t catch yellow fever from a person because it’s only spread through mosquitos, so there was no reason to drink vomit whatsoever (Alpha History).

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That Was Not A Branch, It Was A Five Meter Caiman

Caimans are similar to alligators. They’re not animals you’d want to run into in the wild, especially one that’s five meters long. This scientist tapped a big branch with their machete to try and find out what it was. It was not a branch. It was a 5-meter caiman. They’re known to attack people, and according to Fact Animal, “while caimans are relatively docile animals, they can be territorial and aggressive when threatened.” It’s safe to assume they backed away slowly and got as far away as possible from the caiman. There’s no way they’d want to stick around and see what happens (Cheezburger).

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Raising A Human And A Chimp Isn’t A Good Idea

Raising kids is tough. Making sure you have an ideal home environment, support, and proper care are only a few of the important details needed when raising a child. But in the early 1930s, a psychologist had a different plan than the typical way to raise a child. When Winthrop Kellogg and his wife birthed Donald, they decided to take a different approach to parent. They wanted to take feral raising to a new level and brought in a second child. This child was not human, it was a chimp named Gua. They wanted to see if they could raise both species together, and test if your environment truly shapes how you develop. Together, they raised Donald and Gua side by side. Gua surpassed Donald in terms of scribbling, strength, climbing, reflexes, and language comprehension. But she could not speak English. Kellogg abruptly ended the experiment when Donald began imitating the sounds of his chimp sister from another species, and “in short, the language retardation in Donald may have brought an end to the study” (Smithsonian Mag).

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Coming Home From School Covered In Dead Sheep And Blood

When you go to school, you usually expect to spill soda or milk on your shirt, not dead sheep and blood. That’s what happened during a biology experiment involving sheep lungs. The teacher pumped up the lungs using a bike pump to show how they would inflate. It sounds like a great visual aid for a biology class, but the teacher made a grave error. He pumped the lungs up too much, and instead of deflating, they exploded and soaked the students in dead sheep and blood (Buzzfeed).

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Exploding Coca-Cola Sent This Kid Into The Pool

This student was conducting a science experiment involving Coca-Cola and a pill that makes the carbonated beverage fizz up. We’re not sure what this student was trying to do, but it took a hilarious turn when the Coca-Cola fizzed up too much and the kid fell into the pool. We’re not sure why he was standing so close to the pool, either, but it looks like he set himself up for that failure (Reddit).

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Accidentally Ingesting Fossils

Collecting fossils gives us answers and helps us piece together a past we know nothing about. When this person was conducting field experiments in the wild, they found an object. They couldn’t discern if it was a rock or a fossil, so they licked it, which sounds pretty strange. The object stuck to their tongue, and they went into a coughing fit and swallowed the fossil. They’ll have to wait a few more days for it to pass through their system before they can properly study it (Cheezburger).

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The Cow Comes Back To Life

If you’re superstitious, it’s easy to believe that ghosts come back to haunt us. This student believed in ghosts because as she was dissecting a cow’s heart, a peer made an incredibly convincing moo sound. She screamed, threw the heart across the room, and hit someone in the head. It’s likely she believed the cow had come back to life and was haunting the students for picking her body apart (Buzzfeed).

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Procrastination At Its Finest

When we were younger, the weeks before science fairs were nerve-wracking and stressful. We spent hours conducting our experiments, working on a conclusion, and making a beautiful presentation to show our peers and teachers. This student did the least amount of preparation. Instead of experimenting, they threw together a board with cutout photos of fish and labeled it “creatures of the ocean.” The hilarious presentation likely failed, though their confidence is admirable (AnteChronos).

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What Not To Do With A Chip Pan Fire

There’s a reason we’re not supposed to do things. This teacher took the bait and showed his students what you’re not supposed to do, so his kids wouldn’t make the same mistake. While showing them what not to do with a chip pan fire, which is adding water, the flames hit the ceiling and burned it in the process. He likely burned his eyebrows and any other hair on his body in the process, too (Buzzfeed).

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The Stealthy Lizard Makes An Escape

This lizard has some serious ninja skills. Firstly, it managed to elude capture for several weeks by a team of scientists. That takes some skill. Secondly, as a researcher was only inches away from capturing it, the lizard jumped on their head and leaped down its body and the entire length of them. Instead of grabbing it, it ran off. That’s one way to make a team of scientists feels like they’re miserably failing at their job. Though the fastest lizards can run up to 30 miles per hour, it’s understandable why it’s so hard to capture them (Cheezburger).

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UFOs Do Exist, Right?

Kids say the oddest things, and oftentimes get outlandish ideas from their parents. At a science fair, one student claimed he could make a perpetual motion machine. He used a roll of duct tape and rare earth magnets to try and manipulate an object to spin indefinitely. When it didn’t work, he claimed it was due to friction. But the student didn’t think of this hilarious experiment himself, it was because his father claimed perpetual motion came from aliens (Robhutten).

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Poison Gas Detector Saved Lives When It Turned Into A Smoke Detector

The invention of the smoke detector saved millions of lives. If your home has an operable smoke detector, your chances of dying in a fire decrease by half. This is all thanks to the hilarious science experiment thanks to Walter Jaeger, who was initially trying to invent a sensor to detect poison gas. Instead of gas, his detector picked up on the smoke from his cigarette, leading to the invention of the modern smoke detector. In 1977, stores sold more than 12 million smoke detectors, and today, 9 in 10 homes have smoke detectors. Even though this science experiment went wrong, it created something useful (History).

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The Real-Life Game Of Lava Will Melt Your Shoes

When this person conducted fieldwork in Hawaii on an active volcano, they forgot about the simple contents of lava. It’s hot. As they walked across the lava flow, the soles of their shoes melted off. Lava can reach up to 2,200 degrees F, so it comes as no surprise that the lava melted off their shoes. Afterward, they went through the water, and their boots shrank. According to Fact Monster, this process is simple in that, “as they move apart, they take up more space, causing even solid objects to grow slightly larger. Molecules slow down as they cool, and they take up less room. This causes things to shrink a little bit.” A field scientist should probably know this by now, but it’s possible she was new to the job (Cheezburger).

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Why We Need To Pay Attention

We need to pay attention in all areas of our life, and that includes driving, walking, eating, and conducting experiments in science class. This student learned a valuable lesson in attention the hard way. While they were heating crude oil and measuring its temperature, they failed to keep an eye on their experiment. The boiling oil exploded, hit the overhead light, and caused half the ceiling to break off and fall all over their teacher. That’s one way to ruin a teacher’s day, and a big mess they’ll have to clean up (Buzzfeed).

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What Happens When We Die?

No one knows what happens when we die, though many people speculate. Some believe our soul goes to heaven, while others believe we’re reincarnated into an animal or tree. In 1901, Duncan MacDougall wanted to experiment with the soul and see where people’s souls went after death. To measure this, he weighed recently deceased people’s bodies both right before and immediately after death. After measuring six people, he discovered there was a weight difference of one to one and a half ounces. He somehow managed to obtain 15 dying dogs and did the same experiment. He found there was no weight difference, concluding that dogs have no soul. MacDougall’s experiments had no true basis or conclusion, though no one has tried to replicate the odd, yet hilarious experiment (McGill).

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Don’t Carry Elephant Blood In Your Carry On

It’s not every day you carry elephant blood in your backpack, but for this scientist, it seems pretty common. As he was transporting 65 vials of elephant blood back home on an airplane, they exploded in his bag. That’s worse than cutting yourself and dealing with a bloody cut. The smell and the mess caused by the explosion must have been a sight to see. It’s likely safe to assume his experiment was a complete failure since the elephant blood is now soiled (Cheezburger).

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Mr. Flappy Gets Eaten

In school, you and your teachers might have watched a caterpillar turn into a butterfly, raised a pet guinea pig, or in this case, raised a pet goldfinch. These cute yellow birds are friendly and chirpy. But during this school experiment, when the teacher released the goldfinch into the wild, a monumental moment in its life, it was immediately captured by a falcon. The 24 horrified middle schoolers had a tough life experience, right before their eyes. Even though it didn’t have a happy ending, the children learned more in one moment than they would have, had the bird successfully flown into the wild (Cheezburger).

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Human Orgasm, To The Weather, To Alien Invasion

Trying to link orgasms, the weather, and alien invasions sounds downright ridiculous. But not to Psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. He managed to draw a straight line between the three. Through his experiments, he found an energy called orgone, supposedly responsible for everything, including orgasms, the weather, and aliens. In the 1950s, he was convinced aliens were trying to manipulate this energy. To fight the aliens, he and his son built Cloudbusters, a row of tubes attached to hoses. They immersed the hoses in water and aimed them at the sky. The FDA stopped his experiments and arrested him. The rest of his life was a downfall, in that he was “denied nearly everywhere, diagnosed as suffering from “paranoia manifested by delusions of grandiosity and persecution,” Reich died of a heart attack in the federal penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1957. He was 60 years old and had served nine months of a two-year sentence.” He could never convince anyone of his outlandish science experiments (Washington Post).

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Getting Arrested For Counting Parakeets

Researchers need to be stealthy in the wild, especially when they’re tracking animals. That’s the point of camouflage. When this person used binoculars to count invasive parakeets roosting near NATO headquarters, their science experiment took a turn for the worse. NATO likely assumed they were a spy and the security team arrested them. Using binoculars near NATO headquarters is not the smartest move. At least they have a valid explanation as to why they were hovering around NATO with binoculars (Cheezburger).

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Oh… It Fell

Test tubes don’t stand on their own, and it’s easy to come to this conclusion with one quick glance. That’s why test tube holders exist. For some reason, this teacher decided test tubes can stand on their own. Maybe she misjudged the shape or thought her test tubes were different. After filling the test tubes with acid, one of them fell over, and unsurprisingly so. All she did was look at it and say, “oh… it fell.” To be fair, there’s nothing else you could say in that situation (Buzzfeed).

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10-Cent Beer Night Gone Wrong

You’d think that promoting a game with 10-cent beer would be a good idea. Everyone gets to drink cheaply and enjoy their day. But not this crowd. The Cleveland Indians indirectly experimented on human behavior by running a 10-cent beer promotion to help with attendance. For 10 cents per cup, fans purchased an unlimited amount of beer. But the game took a turn for the worse when a naked fan ran onto the field, people mooned the bleacher section, and fans launched fireworks into the Rangers’ dugout. The game ended with a riot and injuries when people were pelted with rocks. According to Bleacher Report, “most of the intoxicated fans had knives, chains, and portions of the stadium’s seats that they had ripped off. Ken Aspromonte, the manager of the Indians, realizing that some of the Rangers’ players’ lives were in danger, told his players to grab bats and help them out.” It’s safe to say the Cleveland Indians never repeated this experiment (Bleacher Report).

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Don’t Try This At Home, Kids

This student tried to conduct a science experiment involving height. She wanted to test how high is too high for something to fall. Initially, you’d assume she’d test falling with an object like an egg or a bottle of water. Instead, she wanted to test it on herself. She started with reasonable heights, but eventually pushed the experiment too far. As you can see, she broke a few bones in her arms. At least that was the extent of her injuries, and hopefully the last time she tries to experiment on herself (Interesting Engineering).

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What Can Go Wrong, Will Definitely Go Wrong

When one bad thing happens, it feels like it sets off a chain reaction, like the domino effect. Another bad thing happens, and another, and another. That’s what happened to this student during one of their science experiments. First, they set their lab notebook on fire, broke a beaker while trying to put it out, and almost set the printer on fire. It’s a good thing that’s all that happened, and their teacher now uses that as an example of paying attention. Usually, you only make a mistake like that once (Buzzfeed).

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McDonald’s Tried To Be Healthy With Bubblegum-Flavored Broccoli

There’s a reason kids don’t like broccoli, or vegetables in general. Even though they need to eat their vegetables, parents may find it difficult to convince their kids to munch on green food. Why would they do that, when they could eat a burger and fries instead? In 2014, Mcdonald’s tried to help with this by offering bubble-gum-flavored broccoli. They also figured they needed to serve more nutritious food at their restaurant, so why not serve broccoli the fun way? It was a hilarious experiment that never actually made it to a Happy Meal since kids were confused by the taste. It’s better to leave vegetables as they are and instead offers more salads or smaller portions, McDonald’s (Business Insider).

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Give A Baboon Toilet Paper, They’ll Decorate The Trees

This baboon was doing some home decorating after they stole a roll of toilet paper from field workers conducting experiments in the wild. They left their last roll of toilet paper out, and the baboons saw it as an opportunity for free decorations. They grabbed the toilet paper and decorated a very high tree, one that was impossible for them to climb. Let’s hope they were near a river, otherwise, their trips to the bathroom the rest of their time will be very unpleasant (Cheezburger).

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