Vincent’s worst accident involved an attempt, in his early teens, to precipitate silver that fused a Kevlar glove to his hand. ‘The ER doctor kept
asking me what chemicals I’d got on it, but of course it was just very, very hot – a thermal burn, not a chemical burn,’ he says. There was also
an incident where he was trying to isolate potassium via hydrolysis of molten potassium hydroxide, and the epoxy holding his cell together melted. He
threw it all into a large bucket of water, and it frothed all over the lawn. ‘The grass grew back dark green. It was just beautiful.'
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