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My friend and I just finished learning about voltaic cells in our chemistry course, and attempted to recreate an electrolytic cell in our dorm room. Basically a battery with wires attached to two pieces of pencil lead, stuck in a bowl of salt water. Bubbles started rising off the graphite, and we applauded ourselves on a successful experiment. However, when cleaning up we noticed a public pool-like smell; chlorine gas.
Turns out, we had overcharged the cell and instead of creating hydrogen and oxygen gas, we made hydrogen and chlorine gas. The wires were kept in the bowl for a long time, as we were showing our friends how it worked and filling a vial with gas, so we basically flooded our dorm room with a corrosive and dangerous gas. Fortunately not flammable, as we tried to do a flame test with the gas collected because we thought it was oxygen.
TL;DR: wanted to do a fun chemistry experiment and almost gave everyone in our dorm lung damage.
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