I certainly did not encounter any exceptions among my fellow chemistry students in college. The list of available noisy and fiery experiments I know have been conducted illicitly by chem students is too long to list -- [and I ain't gonna admit to having conducted any of them... '-) ]
And my interest in such experiments didn't begin in college -- or, even, high school, for that matter...
But, I do hear tell that, when I was in junior high school, a kid could walk into his local drugstore and buy bottles of "Flowers of Sulfur" and "Saltpeter / Potassium Nitrate" -- right off the shelf. And I recall reading in a book fromt our Jr. High library that, many centuries ago, the Chinese figured out the ratio of those two substances and charcoal to make the contents of their fireworks...
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Pyrotechnic interest is the "seed" that creates many chemists -- just as "arrowhead hunting" produces most professional prehistoric archaeologists (if they will only own up to it)! '-)
IMHO, criminalizing such curiosity is likely to turn the gifted to criminal acts, whereas guiding and enlightenng that drive can lead to outstanding scientific careers.
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IMHO, only lazy, incompetent and fearful dumb@$$3$ espouse "zero tolerance" academic policies.
No telling how many creative geniuses that "PC" idiocy has cost mankind!
My chemistry set, which I got for Christmas as a child, along with a work bench to set it on, included sulfur, potassium nitrate, and carbon black among the bottled chemicals.
So, I was soon making old-fashioned black powder, before one of my science-interested friends told me about nitrogen tri-iodide. In fact, one of my earliest explosive devices was a doorknob bomb. Easier to put together than a pipe bomb.
I believe there was also a bottle of magnesium powder in my chemistry set, which could be made to do interesting things.