Breaking a friend's hand boiler...

I remember being at a friend's house, I think the first time for this particular friend, and he had a handheld glass contraption that would boil a red liquid on the inside of you held it in your hand.

So based on my simple understanding of the science behind it, basically the red liquid was a substance with a very low boiling point. Low enough that cupping your hand around the glass bulb at the bottom where the red liquid had gathered would cause it to boil. It would then bubble up through a squiggly piece of glass into another bulb in top. 

Anyways we played with that, playing cards, his dog, video games, but at some point I left the glass hand boiler in the floor and managed to sit on it, which obviously crushed the thin fragile glass. 

I felt terrible, but he and his mom seemed to not mind and put me at ease about the whole thing...

Just a random memory, thought I would share.