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I heard about this amazing (but slightly scientific) practical joke
and I thought I'd share it all with you:

  My friend Mike hass this egg timer thingy with some colored plastic
beads in water with clear glass beads in it too.  When you flip 
it over the color beads sink to the bottom but because of the glass 
they swirl around first and look cool.  Ideally you shouldn't be
able to see the glass but you kind of can.

  Mike and Richard figured that if they used a chemical closer to the 
refractive index of glass than water is, then it would be harder to see
the beads and it would look cooler.  So in the CRC they found this chem,
carbon disulfide, which seemed like it would work so Richard went to a
chem store and ordered it - the store didn't keep it in.  When he picked
it up the guy made some elaborate preparations with it putting it in
two different safety wraps so Richard asked what the scoop was.  The
guy said, "Yeah, it's kind of dangerous.  I mean, we don't keep it in the
store."
  "How dangerous?" Richard asked.
  He looked in this guide to hazardous materials that the guy showed him
and he found that there was a 10 page entry for this stuff which included:
exposure to the chemical can cause sterility, impotence, damage to the
peripheral and central nervous systems (leaving no nervous system 
untouched), its flamable and explosive, etc.  A little unnerved he asked
whether he could return it when he was done with it and the guy looked
at him like he was crazy and said of course not.
  He took it home and explaned the situation to Mike and they both left
it unopened on the kitchen table for a while wondering what to do with it.
At work Richard had a chem friend who said he'd take it off his hands for
him so without telling Mike he brought it into work and gave this chem
guy the bottle but kept the box.  Later that day he went home and put a
glass of water in the box with a heavy piece of metal on top of it which
would fall and break the glass if it was nudged.  All this was in the box
though, so it couldn't be seen.  He then also sliced off a small corner of
the box so that liquid could come out but the cut was hardly noticable.
The night at dinner Richard "accidently" knocked the box over onto the floor
where it obviously broke and liquid started leaking.  Mike freaked out, jumped
up and ran to open the door - which was locked - so he ran to his room to
get the keys and noticed that Richard hadn't moved but was still sitting
there shaking slightly (suppressing laughter but Mike didn't know this.)
So Mike wigged out again thinking that Richard was really being affected
but by this time Richard couldn't hold it in anymore and burst out laughing
and had to explain the whole thing to Mike...

I love this one.
						- Joe Devlin
						  jdevlin@pollux.usc.edu

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