have you ever blown anything up while testing it? What was it?

Question: have you ever blown anything up while testing it? What was it?
- Keywords:
  blown up,
  experiment,
  explode
Asked by gabby1996 to Carol, Ellie, John, Philip, Rebecca on 25 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by tom0901.
- Carol White answered on 25 Jun 2012:
  
  I’ve never worked with explosives sadly (but I know that John has!) so the only things I’ve had explode are by accident…
  
  I was working in a lab and sneezed very suddenly during my experiment – which made some acid touch some really really really hot glass which then exploded and sent little pieces of glass EVERYWHERE!
  
  Luckily I was wearing a lab coat, gloves, and had a screen in front of my face – phew!
- John Welford answered on 25 Jun 2012:
  
  They blow stuff up on purpose where I used to work, some of it I’m not allowed to talk about though!
  
  The most interesting one that I worked on was smashing two things together really fast and investigating where all the bits went.
  
  Where I work now electronic components sometimes blow up by accident. It is quite easy to build a circuit wrong and accidentally short circuit something. A capacitor went pop recently when I was in the lab and the guy really jumped a long way out of his seat! It wasn’t dangerous, just very loud!
- Rebecca Lacey answered on 29 Jun 2012:
  
  I blew something up in the lab once when I was doing A-level Chemistry but I can’t remember what it was, I just remember causing a fire!

Question: have you ever blown anything up while testing it? What was it?