Tasting chemicals

[clovvy]

Now this is quite rare to hear but things like these do happen.... In my school there is one kid (don't know what's wrong with him) is always curious about the taste of certain chemicals and he took a sample of KMnO4 which is highly diluted when we did a prac (I can't remember what it was) and he took samples of salts like copper sulfate, calcium carbonates and some other chemicals that I can't even remember and described the taste of each (like a drop of KMnO4 is fizzy like one of those soft drinks but tastes weird, CuSO4 is shit and taste like chalkboards etc).... teachers are there to supervise and stuff but.. you know he always find a way to get around things, now the concern is if it's something like concentrated sulfuric acids or hydroflouric (of course schools don't have HF) or bases (this person have been stopped before for trying to get samples of NaOH in his finger)

I wonder if anything similar to this have ever happened outside?

[Sine]

Now this is quite rare to hear but things like these do happen.... In my school there is one kid (don't know what's wrong with him) is always curious about the taste of certain chemicals and he took a sample of KMnO4 which is highly diluted when we did a prac (I can't remember what it was) and he took samples of salts like copper sulfate, calcium carbonates and some other chemicals that I can't even remember and described the taste of each (like a drop of KMnO4 is fizzy like one of those soft drinks but tastes weird, CuSO4 is shit and taste like chalkboards etc).... teachers are there to supervise and stuff but.. you know he always find a way to get around things, now the concern is if it's something like concentrated sulfuric acids or hydroflouric (of course schools don't have HF) or bases (this person have been stopped before for trying to get samples of NaOH in his finger)

I wonder if anything similar to this have ever happened outside?

Firstly to answer your question it most definitely would have happened elsewhere too but I've never heard of people like that beyond year 7-8.

Regardless of how diluted something they should never be "tasting" stuff in the lab even if it's water.
Obviously you won't have severe problems (for the most part )from the stuff you use at school but surely you need to notify anyone in charge for that student's safety.

[sweetiepi]

Now this is quite rare to hear but things like these do happen.... In my school there is one kid (don't know what's wrong with him) is always curious about the taste of certain chemicals and he took a sample of KMnO4 which is highly diluted when we did a prac (I can't remember what it was) and he took samples of salts like copper sulfate, calcium carbonates and some other chemicals that I can't even remember and described the taste of each (like a drop of KMnO4 is fizzy like one of those soft drinks but tastes weird, CuSO4 is shit and taste like chalkboards etc).... teachers are there to supervise and stuff but.. you know he always find a way to get around things, now the concern is if it's something like concentrated sulfuric acids or hydroflouric (of course schools don't have HF) or bases (this person have been stopped before for trying to get samples of NaOH in his finger)

I wonder if anything similar to this have ever happened outside?

Most chemicals used in highschool are relatively harmless (compared to some stuff I've used in the uni labs that will really cause harm), however I hope that kid somewhat understands the hazards around chemicals such as \(\ce{KMnO4}\) when taking the risk, as they can be potentially toxic or carcinogenic when ingested, and as Sine said you should never taste stuff in the lab. Have you spoken to your teacher or another member of the science staff about it?

The worse I've heard of is someone in one of my labs taking a couple of falcon tubes (special containers with a tip at the end you press into a vortex mixer. Cool.) for their own use. Pretty sure they got into a spot of trouble with that as the lab technicians know what's up.