Detlef Basel, our resident science show maestro, has been fondly mentioned by a former high school student from his time as a Pretoria teacher at St Albans. You know a person is impressive when they linger in a student's memory for 37 years. And it seems some things don't change...
This is what Pete ''George'' Bower (Class of 70) writes: ''I remember sitting next to Rob van der Merwe in Science. Detlef Basel was the teacher. One experiment involved putting sugar together with an acid. The sugar had been "diluted" with an inordinate amount of sand so the experiment didn't work as planned.
"Add heat," said Basel, reaching for a Bunsen burner.
The upshot of the thing was it exploded, covering the front of his safari suit in a corrosive mixture. Detlef still makes things explode, generally on purpose. But the safari suits don't seem to be much in evidence these days, thank goodness.
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