Zach was nervous, not only was he new to magic, but he also needed to wow a class full of magicals that had never heard of physics or chemistry. Glancing over at Minerva, he was glad that she'd volunteered to help him with a couple of the experiments. He looked down at the 6 numbered jars that were filled with white powder. Hopefully there wouldn't be any students stupid enough to taste any of these given that two of them were mildly poisonous. Nothing too dangerous, it will just make them vomit, but still unpleasant.
Daphne entered the Physics and Chemistry classroom with Lavender and Parvati, interested to see what else could be done with Physics and Chemistry. She knew that both Harry and Hermione were studying it as part of their home-schooling work. She'd also seen the effects of individual element transfiguration. A few of which had required a quick exit from the area when they made too much of something dangerous. She noticed that one of the willing participants in their lessons was sitting unobtrusively to one side. This suggests that this will be an interesting lesson.
Seeing Padma off to one side she immediately went over in case they needed to pair up seeing that the desks had two seats at each of them, along with a weird looking potion burner.
"Good morning class, as I'm not very good with transfiguration yet, Magi Minerva has agreed to help me with a few things later in the lesson. As this is a combined class we're going to spend the first half dealing with chemistry. Minerva, would you mind making up the odd pair over there, as for safety we want to have two people working on this at the same time. Now would one person on each table come forward and grab one of the boxes from the side. No magic use allowed. Sometimes we'll be dealing with magically sensitive materials that could degrade or even blow up. Can anyone tell me one such material?"
Daphne was wishing that Hermione was there, as absolutely no-one put their hands up. She was one of the students in the classroom that squeaked in fear as Professor Bell took a full Erumpent Horn from behind the desk and placed it on the desk.
"Does anyone recognise this?" he asked.
Daphne was one of the one's that put her hand up, shaking slightly as she recalled her father's warnings about Erumpent Horns being dangerous so stay out of this room. Suddenly she put 2 and 2 together and realised the answer to the previous question.
"Miss Brown?"
"It's an Erumpent Horn Professor." Lavender replied.
"Fortunately, it isn't, it's a replica I had made for this class. Now can anyone that had their hand up just now answer the previous question?"
Daphne noticed that she was the only one that kept her hand up.
"Magi Daphne."
"Is it Erumpent Horn because as well as being very sensitive to fire, it's also very sensitive to magic."
"That is correct, 1 point to both of you."
He then picks up a glass jar with a clear liquid in it.
"Now can anyone in this class tell me what's in this jar?"
Daphne just knew this was a trick question, and so kept her hand down, and shook her head when she saw Padma about to raise hers.
"Miss Turpin?"
"Is it water?"
"I'm sorry Miss Turpin, but if you'd been thirsty you'd have just killed yourself. This container contains sulfuric acid dissolved in water.
"This leads to the safety instructions for the lab. First, never ever put anything you find in this classroom or the storeroom in your mouth. It is far too easy to accidently kill yourself doing that. Second, in your boxes you will find a pair of safety glasses. Before we every start working on any experiment make sure you're wearing them. If you wear glasses, we have googles that will go over them. Third, never ever smell something directly, if you need to sniff it, waft it to your face like this. There are some compounds that may make you feel dizzy or just plain pass out. Forth, No running, jostling, magic, or horseplay in the classroom, especially when we have chemicals out. Fifth, at the end of every lesson we all wash our hands before leaving the class if we've been working with chemicals, as we don't want any of you keeling over at lunch time because what we were working on was poisonous. Finally and most importantly, if you are ever unclear on the instructions I've given you, ask for clarification.
"I want you to now open your boxes, there should be two pairs of safety glasses. Two pairs of leather gloves, and two pairs of latex gloves. One plain glass rod. One glass rod with metal running through it ending in a small loop. Six small glass beakers, the little open jars with a spout. A plastic bottle of water that says 500ml on it, that's millilitre. Two metal sample scoops. A pile of paper towels. Finally a sheet of paper with the names of various chemicals, including powdered Erumpent Horn, and a description of what happens when they're burned in small quantities, put into water and dissolved, and what colour they turn an indicator paper and liquid.
"Once you've read the sheet of paper, I want one person from each table to come and get a tray of equipment. The other person should come and get a compartmented tray and I will place samples from these numbered jars into each compartment. You should both be wearing your rubber gloves and the glasses before you leave the table."
Once everyone was back at their tables with a tray and equipment tray he carried on by putting his own equipment on the desk.
"Now you've all got your equipment I'll go through everything. On the side of your desks you should see a two runes on a brass plate. Magi Bathsheba was kind enough to put these together for me, the one on the left will make the Bunsen burner, that's the name for this burner, produce methane gas, and ignite it. Further touches with a little magic will increase the rate of production. The one on the right will do the reverse, lowering and then extinguishing it. Around the base of the burner is a metal cuff with a hole in it, this lines up with a hole on the burner unless you've played with it already. If yours does line up, turn it so that it doesn't before you try to turn on the burner. This is important it might not ignite if you don't, and if enough of the gas gets into the air we could suffocate, and we wouldn't even know. When you first turn it on and increase the flame, it will be yellow. Don't turn it up too far like this as when you close the hole at the bottom the flame will turn blue and stand straight rather than gutter. This means that it is a lot hotter, so even if you put out candles with your fingers do not put your fingers in the flame. The hottest part of the flame will be where it is the lightest blue that's closest to white.
"When you're doing your flame tests, use your leather gloves and dip a paper towel in some water, and then touch the small metal loop to the towel to dampen it, this will allow the crystals to stick to it. Then touch the loop to the sample you want to test and place it in the flames. As you can see, this one burns with a blue-green flame.
"Moving onto the tests with the water, always add small samples to water and not the other way around. This is because some things can react rather violently with water, and the last thing you want is to have acid land on you because you did it the wrong way around. With the indicator strips, you'll dip them into the solution and they will change colour if it's a certain type of liquid. If you're going to use both the indicator paper and liquid as we are today, always do the paper first so that it isn't affected by the indicator liquid. Now you've got 20 minutes so there's no rush. Work together and note down what effect you get with what tests for each sample. I also shouldn't need to say this, but use a separate beaker for each sample and stir with the glass rod not the spoons."
Zach called a halt after 20 minutes.
"Hands up everyone that finished all the tests."
Daphne and Padma put up their hands, as did a few of the others, including Lavender.
"Well done, one point each. Hands up everyone that thinks they've identified each item."
Daphne and Padma, as well as Lavender and Parvati put their hands up.
"Who didn't identify the Erumpent Horn?"
Daphne looks around and doesn't see anyone hold up their hands.
"Well done that was number 3. Who got Chlorine for number 2… Well done. Hydrochloric acid for 5?... Table salt for 4?... Sugar for 1?... Number 6 was Sodium Bicarbonate. If you take a small amount and add it to your number 5 solution it should fizz up. Did anyone get all of those correct?"
Daphne and Padma were the only ones to put their hands up, though privately Daphne thought she'd cheated a little having done some of this with Harry and Hermione.
"Two points each. For the second half of the class we're going to a room provided by Hogwarts for the physics experiment."
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He led them into an open field with a sturdy wooden frame. In the centre of the frame was a large boulder with an iron eye hole in the top. Daphne could see various eye holes attached to the wooden frame and a pile of rope, sticks and pullies.
"Ok. Gather round. As this is the physics class, I figured I'd make it a practical demonstration. Without using transfiguration or destroying anything, as a class you need to lift that boulder. If you accidentally break anything Minerva is on hand to repair it. Hogwarts, will you be joining in?"
Daphne spun round and saw that Hogwarts was standing behind the door that they'd come in.
"I will be, as I've not had the opportunity to try this."
"If it's not clear, you are allowed to use magic. The Magi in the class are not allowed to try and levitate the boulder, as I have been told about that aspect of your training."
Daphne's eyes lose their sparkle as she realises that Minerva must have been advising him.
"You have 40 minutes starting now. At the end we're going to do an experiment with a pool of water that I've wanted to do for years."
Daphne looked through the stuff and quickly realised that she already knew how to solve this, as it was to do with the way that pullies could be used to convert weight to distance. Walking over to Professor Bell she said.
"Professor, I've already done this experiment on a much smaller scale with Harry and Hermione. It's to do with the way that combining pullies over the boulder allows you to convert its weight into distance."
"Well done, it is indeed. Why were they doing the experiment?"
"They're following the Home-schooling curriculum, and we did it over the summer at my house as we have more space."
"Well do tell them that our students will be doing their GCSE's in Chemistry and Physics rather than OWLs. So if they want to inform the government that they're able to take that course here, they can then transfer into this class. Some of the stuff will be revision, but we'll be running an accelerated program to teach the basics this year, and then the next two years are the GCSE years.
"As you're not part of this, would you be able to go and help Minerva set up the finale while I supervise here."
"Yes Professor."
She and Minerva walk over a way behind a small hillock. There Minerva conjures a 10' wide 3' deep thick glass pool. Turning to Daphne she gives her instructions.
"I want you to take 10 paces away from the glass and dig a trench deep enough that you can just see the top of the tank and wide enough for a couple of people to pass. Pile the earth up between the trench and the tank. When you finish that help me fill the tank with water. I'm going to be setting up magical shields that should hopefully contain anything that comes out. The trench is a just in case.
"Sir Conolly allowed us to try this at a bomb range, as long as they could set a high speed camera to record it, and… Well you'll see."
With that news, Daphne put more effort into pressing down the dirt, going so far as to transfigure the leading edge into granite. It seemed to take forever to fill the tank with water. Especially as Minerva needed to go and repair stuff a couple of times. She faintly heard Professor Bell call time just before they finished.
"Go, I'll finish up here."
Daphne went out to the boulder and saw that it was still pretty much as she'd left it.
As she walked up she could hear Professor Bell saying, "Hands up everyone that currently thinks this is impossible."
Around half the class put their hands up.
Picking up 4, 4 block pulleys he begins to thread them together after attaching the rope to the bottom of one of them. Once he's done he get's Daphne to hook the one the rope is tied to and the one that the rest of the rope is leaving from to two eye holes in the beam above the Boulder. The second two get hooked to the eye attached to the boulder. As he's doing it he explains what's happening.
"A single pulley, as you discovered, allows you to change the direction that you need to apply force. So in your first few experiments with the pulleys it allowed you to pull down instead of trying to lift up. Some of you had a good idea with the levers, however you'd have needed a 25m lever to lift this if the fulcrum was only 1m away from the bottom of the boulder. Cornfoot, Entwhistle, Roper, Vane, Smith, and Padma Patil all had the right idea when you started to combine the pulleys, but you didn't go far enough. Each pair of pulleys divides the effective weight of the boulder by almost 2, but we'll cover friction another day. As this boulder weighs 1 ton, you weren't going to be able to get away with just one or two sets of pulleys, or even two blocks of four. If you note, I've got 8 pairs of pulleys, and it's still going to feel heavy. We'll still need just over 62kg or 134lbs of force to lift it up. So, as it looks like Daphne's finished setting it up, who wants to pull with me?"
Together they all manage to pull boulder one meter off the ground.
"Well done. What we've just demonstrated is that with a knowledge of forces and a little bit of math you can achieve things that would otherwise be impossible for use to do individually. You could probably used a variety of spells to achieve the same result. However, having a knowledge of how these forces work and how they can be made more manageable. Non-magicals use physics for their buildings, cars, aeroplanes, and even their computers. If you could sum up physics with one word it would be 'Why?' Why does the world work like this? Why does this work? Why do things fall? Why is a canon ball harder to stop than an arrow even though it's going slower?. On the other hand Chemistry could be said to be asking 'what?' and for this I have a very big what. What happens if I drop a kilogram of Rubidium into water? If you want to find out, follow me."
Walking over to the glass tank that they'd prepared, Professor Bell takes a glass ampule from Minerva. Turning towards the class he holds out the ampule.
"This contains 5 grams of Rubidium. On it's own this would probably splash everyone in the classroom, which is why we're doing the bigger experiment out here. Now, normally we wouldn't be able to get hold of so much Rubidium as it's too expensive. But we're in a magical school where we can do things like turn a block of wood into metal. What Minerva and Daphne have done is provided us with a large glass tank and something to hide behind if things go horribly wrong. We also have some magical defence in place too. So if you would all stand in the trench and position yourselves so that you can just about see the whole tank. I've been told that you may be able to see purple flames being produced by the Rubidium as it reacts.
"Whenever you're ready Minerva."
Minerva drops the transfigured block of wood into the water and there's a huge gout of steam and flashes of light from inside the tank. Then there's an almighty womph and a crack as the Rubidium breaks up and breaks the glass. A shower of water falls down on the shields with small explosions as droplets of Rubidium land in the same places. Everyone is awestruck at the sight.
"I don't remember it being like that when we tested it." Professor Bell said shakily.
Minerva just nods in agreement.
"Well, I think it's time to get some lunch and a cup of tea, who's with me?"
There were cries of agreement.
"Who's going to be back for the next lesson?"
Everyone looked around until Daphne said "I will be."
Slowly everyone else agreed.
