Four children injured after another chemistry demonstration goes wrong in Spain
Less than a year after an explosion at an outreach event in Girona, Spain that injured 18, another accident in the same region has hurt four children after a demonstration went wrong. A surprisingly simple experiment – the bicarbonate and vinegar volcano – exploded and burnt some students, who were attending a summer school in Brunyola, a small village south of Girona.
According to several statements in the local media, the summer school supervisor decided to add ethanol to the mixture of vinegar and sodium bicarbonate. It’s unclear whether the ethanol was purposedly lit on fire to increase the impressiveness of the experiment, but at some point an explosion took place, according to eyewitness accounts. Four of the 13 children present received burns ranging in seriousness, and three of them were transferred to a hospital in Barcelona by helicopter.
‘It’s very hard for ethanol to catch fire spontaneously in such conditions,’ explains Aythami Soto, a chemistry communicator and youtuber based in Girona. ‘The reaction between [sodium] bicarbonate and acetic acid is actually endothermic, it absorbs heat,’ he explains. ‘The carbon dioxide generated could create a small explosion if pressurised, but it’s considerably complicated for ethanol to ignite. That process would need around 300°C to suddenly start.’
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