EXPLOSION at campus lab

So at OSU we have your average crappy campus newspaper (The Lantern), and today they ran the story:

Fire breaks out in campus lab

When I read this headline, a vision of a bunsen burner getting tipped over and lighting a lab notebook on fire comes into mind. You know, a fire. A simple fire. Maybe it was in a freshman lab and the TA happened to be worthless... so the fire spread... Something like that.

HOWEVER, if you read the story, you'll see that this headline probably isn't that appropriate. For one, the story includes a picture:

That image had the caption (emphasis added):

The windows of Newman and Wolfrom Laboratory were blown out from the fire that occurred on Friday.

And then if you actually go into the article:

"The accident happened when a shelf collapsed while containers (filled with the chemical hexane) were being loaded onto it," Coleman said. "Since hexane is somewhat similar in form to lighter fluid, any sort of spark after the spill would have caused a fire. We still have to inspect the damage further, but we may decide to go around and weld all the shelves to the wall in the future."

I see... So the windows were blown out after a spark ignited some lighter fluid... So you're saying that there was an EXPLOSION.

So I think a better headline might have been "Explosion at campus lab." Ya' think?

That's kind of a silly quote too. "Oops, so we used rickety old shelves to store explosive chemicals. We might think about changing that later... Maybe..."

Also note that this was the first story about this, and it ran today, but the event happpened Friday...

It's good to be a Buckeye...

(aside: when I interned in Texas, a number of times I had to explain what a Buckeye was to those poor Texans...)