r/KidsAreFuckingStupid • u/Betty_Swollockz_ • 1d ago
Kid discovers mixing metal and electricity is dangerous
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u/UnstableIsotopeU-234 1d ago
Sticks metal into extension plug, turns it on, blows on the burning carpet and then uses an aerosol spray! A series of bad decisions
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u/Korbrent 1d ago
He's lucky he wasn't fast enough to cause more damage.
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u/Chill_Edoeard 1d ago
I have a feeling he isnt fast enough in general
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u/Maewhen 1d ago
He’s definitely slow up there
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u/raidersfan18 1d ago
Smart enough to turn on the power AFTER he plugged in the metal though.
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u/GeneralKenobyy 1d ago
Unfortunately, he was the fastest in one aspect, his own creation.
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u/Sylvan_Strix_Sequel 1d ago
Ironically, his calmness during all this is unintentionally his best decision. He doesn't know how dangerous what he did is, so he is very calm and deleberate in his actions.
There is something strangely mesmerizing about watching someone calmly fuck up. It's like an approaching trainwreck. There's a stark beauty in the serene idiocy.
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u/friedjollof 1d ago
Have my up vote buddy. Never have I seen sheer stupidity described in mesmerizing words
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u/DawRogg 1d ago
Yeah, now that's a stupid fucking kid
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u/Extension_Swordfish1 1d ago
Learning by experiments
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u/DawRogg 1d ago
Yeah, he could have burned his house down or seriously injured. But yeah learnding
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u/melrowdy 1d ago
He could've but didn't, so unless he learns literally nothing from this, I see no issues. That's how learning is done when your parents can't be bothered to teach you anything.
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u/DawRogg 1d ago
And then spraying Axe on it afterwards.
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u/CosmicTaco93 1d ago
I feel like that was just a piss-poor attempt to hide the smell of burning carpet and metal. The fire was completely out by the time he started spraying
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u/Blubbpaule 1d ago edited 1d ago
He could've but didn't, so unless he learns literally nothing from this, I see no issues.
This is survivorship bias lol. For this kid surviving the ordeal, many others have killed themselves or others doing shit like this.
This is definitely not a good way to learn. To learn would be in a safe controlled environment. This could have killed people.
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u/greybush75 1d ago
To be fair I feel like the entire 70s\80s was survivorship bias. You know how many things I heard of people dying to that just aren't around anymore. There was a short period where lawn darts were super popular... Until they weren't hahaha.
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u/Acquista23 1d ago
we were somehow smart enough to do these experiments anywhere but the carpet or in doors in general. did my fair share of “burning stuff because it seemed cool” but wouldn’t be caught dead doing that shit in my own bedroom as a kid haha
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u/Canarity 1d ago
He is experimenting, but yeah, doing such things on a carpet is generally not a good decision
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u/Bella_Anima 1d ago
I’m sure a lot of kids who destroyed property/killed people doing this were just experimenting, still really really fucking stupid.
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u/unforgiven91 1d ago
you do experiments after consulting with an adult. It's kid science 101
kid is stupid beyond belief.
"Mom, can I see what happens when you stick metal into a plug?"
"It'll start a fire you idiot"
done.
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u/FrostyD7 1d ago
"How was I supposed to know this could happen without trying it?"
-Kid holding phone connected to internet
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u/Endbounty 1d ago
Natural selection
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u/Hi_Trans_Im_Dad 1d ago
Natural selection selects for the kids who don't think quickly and lose their shit when this happens.
This kid could still go places. IDK where, but not a morgue yet.
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u/WanderlustFella 1d ago
Back in my day, we simply plugged in a metal fork into the outlet. How times have changed
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u/B-Loni 1d ago
I remember as a kid, probably like 4-5 yrs old, I found matches and went outside to play with them…I decided to light the match book on fire and it obviously grew quickly once it hit the remaining matches. I panicked and threw it into a paper bag that was next to me. Pretty obvious what happened next. Luckily I decided to stomp on it only because I wanted to hide the evidence from my dad, before he beat my ass 🤣
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u/Zealousideal_One_315 1d ago
Did a similar thing as kid with a book of matches, but i threw it down on the driveway floor.... that had a giant grease spot on the ground. it burn so high i was frozen in shock. Neighbor came and threw dirt on it, just walked away and didnt say a word to me. The 80s were great!! HA!!
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u/lycanthrope90 1d ago
This must be why in the 90’s firefighters had to come to my school and talk to us about how dangerous it was to play with matches and lighters lol
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u/firstwefuckthelawyer 1d ago
That’s actually the truth dude, kids WERE playing with matches (that were mostly strike anywhere) and lighters (without the bullshit safety) more than usual.
I knew how to make thermite in third grade.
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u/Dragonfly-Adventurer 1d ago
We had a coffee can full of gasoline we'd light on fire and then throw things in.
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u/Complex_Professor412 1d ago
Leaded too right?
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u/Dragonfly-Adventurer 1d ago
As stolen from the grown-ups lawnmower canister, absolutely.
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u/lycanthrope90 1d ago
Oh I know the firefighters told us all about it lol. Scared the shit out of us.
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u/B-Loni 1d ago
Neighbor already knew you scared the shit out of yourself so bad you’d most likely never do it again. Lol
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u/Zealousideal_One_315 1d ago
No doubt! Parents never found out either! I think I'll see if he is still around and thank him for that.
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u/Candybert_ 1d ago
He probably told your parents, and they were just glad they didn't have to scold you, cause you didn't know they knew.
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u/MisterDonkey 1d ago
I lit a tree stump on fire with a magnifying glass and the firemen eventually showed up when it smoked out the neighbourhood.
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u/imathrowyaaway 1d ago
when I was 4 or 5, we had a dinner for the extended family that my mother set up. including candles and those fancy, colored napkins. these were bright red.
I remember looking at the burning candles, and just going, “huh, I wonder what happens if I just hold a whole napkin above the little flames?”
anyway, the brightly colored napkins were probably dyed with some flammable material, because they almost instantly went up in flames. queue me not sure what to do, my mom holding my hands, waving the napkin around, and the kitchen was full of tiny, floating pieces of ashes.
I also remember being surprised but pretty unemotional about it. “oh, huh, so they burn that fast?” to my great surprise, I didn’t get spanked either, so good times overall.
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u/vintagecomputernerd 1d ago
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u/Aron-Jonasson 1d ago
Struwwelpeter, truly a bunch of amazing and wholesome stories to read to your children :)
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u/Camera_dude 1d ago
Dang... german kid books don't play. "All that remains is a pile of ashes".
Learning the rules by sheer trauma.
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u/AmatoerOrnitolog 1d ago
In Danish, we say, "If you play with fire, you'll wet your bed."
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u/sultansofswinz 1d ago
I nearly started a fire twice when I was a kid and I don't think my parents realised the gravity of the situation both times. The first time, I used the wrong cable to charge a battery pack for an electric airsoft gun and it was melting when I went to check on it. It was fully deformed and started to fuse to the table I had it on. A few years later, I bought a cheap PC power supply from eBay and that thing went bang the moment I turned it on, churning out black smoke and sparks.
That taught me a life lesson to never trust children with electronics and I will be checking everything that enters the house if I ever have kids. Having said that, I feel like the early 2000s was the prime era to buy dodgy cheap electronics, with eBay being the main place to order things online. I mostly use Amazon now and I trust anything that has a 4+ star rating.
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u/Resident_Bluebird_77 1d ago
Did he.... Did he try to extinguish a fire with deodorant?
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u/CrimsonFatalis8 1d ago
Probably trying to mask the smell. But he probably was dumb enough to try and put it out with axe.
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u/headwaterscarto 1d ago
How’d that not blow a breaker
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u/Kelvin_Inman 1d ago
Wouldn’t it trip the surge protector first? (No idea, that’s why I ask)
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u/Askefyr 1d ago edited 1d ago
Nope - surge protectors look for spikes in voltage. This thing would take 110V just fine (it looks like a US plug), so there'd be no issues there.
However, I'm assuming it drew a fuckton of amps, which would blow a fuse. In fact, old fuses were iirc pieces of copper wire that would burn in half at high loads, breaking the circuit.
Update: did the math for fun. Remembering Ohm's law (V=IR), the current (I) is voltage divided by resistance. The resistance of this is hard to tell off the cuff, but let's say it's something like 0.01 ohms. That's roughly the resistance of one meter of iron wire.
At 110V, that's a theoretical max draw of 11 kA, which is what you'd usually call a fuckton. It won't actually draw that much, but it'll draw as much as it can from a single outlet before the fuse goes clonk.
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u/Muted_Dinner_1021 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah it will work just as a resistive heat element or a hair dryer. But to build upon your analysis to get closer to the real amps. That 11kA assumption is based if the iron wire was 3.52 mm thick (still counting it as one meter), i think it looks more like 1 or 2 mm. So for 2mm it is max 3,559A at 0.0309 Ohm resistance at 110 volts. But then again you have the copper cable from the fusebox to the outlet aswell so lets say it's 20 meters of 1.5mm copper cable, that resistance is 0.19 Ohms.
Then the total resistance is 0.0309+0.19= 0.221 ohms. And then I=V/Rtot is 110/0.221 = 497,7 Amps. Still hell of alot, and the kid probably pulled out the socket just before the fuse.
And when metal gets hot like that the resistance increase very fast, at 800 degrees that wire would have 0.175 ohms of resistance instead of the initial 0.0309, so now the total resistance is 0.221+0.175=0.396 Ohms, so the amps is then reduced to 110/0.396 = 277 Amps, if it doesn't just melts off the wire completely in the weakest spot almost instantly and breaks the circuit.
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u/Askefyr 1d ago
Good shout, there are other limiting factors - 500A sounds more realistic. My point was mostly that it's a lot, and enough to make any household outlet fuse shit itself.
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u/Muted_Dinner_1021 1d ago
Haha yes. I've seen what 200-300 Amps can do at work, not at 110 volts but yeah
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u/Bobert_Manderson 1d ago
I don’t know the numbers like y'all, but as a kid I stuck a paper clip into an outlet because I thought a small amount of putty would insulate me from the electricity. It did not.
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u/Askefyr 1d ago
The only difference between that and science is adding more putty until it works. It probably would have at some point.
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u/Anxious-Whole-5883 1d ago
When I was in 8th grade we were learning about electomagnets and how they are made stronger and what not. We made some tiny ones in class, and I thought it was neat. I told my dad, and we went out to the garage and took the large spool of wire he had for various projects. He added a 110 volt plug to using the 2 ends to the wire spool... and plugged it in.
It instantly stuck to the side of the shelving unit, then promptly heard 2 pops and the neighborhood was dark... We blew our circuit and something further up the totem pole in the neighborhood.. His response was we unplugged it and went back in the house.
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u/headwaterscarto 1d ago
You’re probably right, I think my terminology is off. I was thinking fuses actually
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u/Vast-Breakfast-1201 1d ago
How does the breaker know it's not a toaster
It was probably below the amperage limit. You can pull like 1.5kW before you trip the breaker...
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u/Global_Permission749 1d ago
If your toaster heated up that quickly you'd burn your toast to a crisp in seconds.
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u/ThickAsABrickJT 1d ago
Does yours not? The coils in my toaster get red-hot in seconds, just like the coil in the video.
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u/Flossthief 1d ago
The wire is acting as a fuse
It can't handle this much energy and it melted on its own
If he had a much larger piece of metal it would flip a breaker
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u/Usable_Nectarine_919 1d ago
Yeah because what always helps to stop a fire is SPRAYING FUCKING AEROSOLS ONTO IT!!! He’s lucky he didn’t set his whole house on fire and kill his entire family!
Fucking stupid kids 🤦♂️
Edit: I realise he probably sprayed that to try and hide the smell or whatever but it’s still fucking dumb
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u/PhotoAwp 1d ago
I have a memory like this that terrifies me to think about. My cousin had a desk she had melted candles all over and we discovered if you poured a little bit of perfume you could light it on the desk and it would burn for a couple seconds and go out, without hurting the desk. Like stupid kids we kept adding more and more perfume, making it bigger every time it went out. Well the last time I guess we went overboard, poured way too much. And like a typical teenager she had magazine pictures and posters taped to the wall by only their top 2 corners. When we lit the last puddle it went up in a huge ball of flames which created a rush of hot air that lifted all the posters up off the wall, then went out like 10 seconds later.
But her room could have gone up like a roll of toilette paper with walls covered in loose magazine paper. It was terrifying, and I still cringe thinking about it. My aunt never found out and even tho its been like 20 years I still don't want her to lol.
We never did it again, or spoke about it. We scared the fuck out of ourselves, and it still scares me how stupid we were.
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u/Ralfarius 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah because what always helps to stop a fire is SPRAYING FUCKING AEROSOLS ONTO IT!!!
Probably trying to stop mom and dad from
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u/freaky-molerat 1d ago
I'm sure the parents could probably spell it.
This idiot kid, not so much.
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u/DontAskGrim 1d ago
Teenage boys are fucking idiots and it compounds when 2 or more group up. Source: Was one.
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u/ProbablySlacking 1d ago
Ugh. My best friend and I growing up - learn about density and that gas will float on water, so we go in the backyard and mix the two in a jar.
… the jar, of course, get knocked over. Into my best friend’s mom’s garden. We knew we were fucked so we needed to get the gas out.
So we did what any reasonable kids would do, we lit it on fire. Thinking was there wasn’t that much gas, so the gas would burn and the water wouldn’t.
Cue massive fireball, big billowing black smoke.
Yes, of course we ineffectively sprayed the garden hose into it.
Luckily the house didn’t burn down. I don’t think the plants made it though.
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u/reddit_sells_ya_data 1d ago
Tbh it doesn't really stop until mid 20s and then if you regroup with old uni/school friends you tend to revert to previous behaviour at any age
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u/charlesthefish 1d ago
Can confirm. Blew up a port-o-potty on accident as an idiot teenager trying to sneakily smoke a black and mild with friends.
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u/StormyJet 1d ago
I feel like there's several steps in between those two actions
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u/Primary_Key_7952 1d ago
Nah bro farts are flammable so when you light your lighter inside a fart can it go boom.
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u/Stargost_ 1d ago
Kid is lucky as fuck. The thing caught on fire, he blew air on it, and then spayed it with DEODORANT, and it somehow didn't end in a house fire.
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u/sheps 1d ago
Government Regulations for carpet fire ratings, that's how.
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u/asyork 1d ago
Yep. Basically everything your house is (supposed to be) made out of burns slowly. Was even "better" in the asbestos days, but that ended up being a bad idea.
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u/stinkiestfoot 1d ago
My older brother did shit like this back in the day.
Once, he fashioned a flame thrower out of Axe body piss to torch a dead hanging plant. He didn’t account for the plastic wires to melt and for the entire plant to fall off of the porch and leave a mess on the driveway. Hosed it off just in time for my mom to come and ask, “Why is the driveway wet?” Oh, I was sooooo excited to rat on his sorry ass. And that’s just one of many crazy schemes he got up to back then.
Anyways, that brother is graduating with his PhD in automotive engineering this spring.
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u/DETECTOR_AUTOMATRON 1d ago
let’s be honest though, who hasn’t turned an aerosol can into a flamethrower at one point in their lives?
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u/Pubelication 1d ago
☝️ stinkiestfoot
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u/stinkiestfoot 1d ago
facts. I was more of a “Mix all the grossest things from the yard into a bucket” kinda kid.
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u/ihavenoidea12345678 1d ago
The only difference between these kids and their parents is that the kids have access to super cheap video recording.
I remember some foolish indoor fires, thankfully there was no video.
That being said, I watched these boys and smiled.
And glad it’s not my dang carpet!
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u/Mitridate101 1d ago
Tell his parents to go ahead and spend his college fund.
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u/DefiantDelay1222 1d ago
This is the type of curiosity and experimentation that could easily lead someone into electrical engineering.
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u/VoteCamacho2508 1d ago
Facts, I have an EE degree and also set my bedroom carpet on fire when I was 13.
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u/poo-cum 1d ago
That Photonicinduction geezer from old youtube was an electrical engineer, and had a carpet that looked worse than this.
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u/THIS_IS_YOUR_MOTHER_ 1d ago
He's going to now ask his friend to help re-arrange his room so that his bed is covering the spot.
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u/schizeckinosy 1d ago
He wrote in his notebook: “light bulb experiment #420 partial success. Light output was good, longevity poor. Undesirable side effect of lighting carpet on fire”
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u/GreatGizmo744 1d ago
The fucking deodorant at the end was just the final touch this video needed.
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u/calguy1955 1d ago
When I was his age I remember making an emergency trip to the carpet store on my stingray to get a carpet remnant that matched the rug in my room. I put it over the damaged spot and then rearranged the furniture so that may be covered the area. My parents didn’t find out until I was grown.
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u/PartyPeepo 1d ago
Remember everybody, the next time you are arguing with somebody on reddit there is a good possibility they are about as smart as this guy.
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u/Lonely_white_queen 1d ago
burns his carpet with hot copper than sprays it with a flammable gas. this is America-tier schooling.
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u/MathematicianNo4596 1d ago
I mean that could have gone way worse, at least he was conducting an experiment and ready to pull the plug when it went too far I'm not sure if this belongs in this thread honestly.
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u/albatrocious97 17h ago
He was so lucky the fire was already out before he sprayed it with fucking aerosol.
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u/OceanBytez 1d ago
Kids like this have a lot of potential because instead of wasting the day away on video games or TV they are experimenting and genuinely curious about the world, but if you don't pay attention and educate them this type of stuff happens. Seriously, if dad is present he should grab some old videos from OG King Of Random before he died, and WITH SUPERVISION help his son do all kinds of crafts the smart way so that this doesn't happen.
Healthy outlets for curious minds make a world of difference.
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u/garbles0808 1d ago
and then he sprayed it with aerosol???? jeez...