It’s always funny until someone gets hurt, and for a young boy in China, pulling the tab on a cola can left in the freezer was anything but a good joke.

The accident occurred a few nights back on August 25th, when a young Chinese boy pulled back the tab on a can of cola that had been sitting in his freezer for several hours. According to the boy’s mother, the moment the boy pulled open the tab, the can exploded and sent aluminum shrapnel flying at his face.

While the boy was lucky to avoid any shrapnel to the eye, he ended up with 38 stitches to the lower part of his face, 31 of them lining the cheek area and and 7 on the inside of his mouth.

Curiously, the mother of the victim spent the next day posting pictures of the incident to Chinese social network site Weibo. Her hope was to raise awareness of the danger of putting carbonated beverages in the freezer.

RocketNews24 reminds that cans are designed to hold a certain volume of liquid. When carbonated beverages are frozen, the water expands as it turns to ice, and the carbon dioxide gas gets squeezed out of the mixture as it solidifies.    The pressure on the inner walls of the cans becomes a ticking time bomb.

Most of the time, when carbonated beverage cans are left in the freezer, the product explodes on its own — out of harms way, only depressing because it leaves a sticky residue that no one wants to clean up.

In the case of this poor Chinese boy, a ‘sticky mess’ has an entirely different meaning:

[Thx Weibo, Sohu, RocketNews24]

Elie AyrouthTwitterFacebook

Elie is a product of Orange County, CA. In early 2012, his dentist diagnosed him with 8 different cavities, three of which on the same tooth, as a result of his 23-year Sour Patch Kid addiction.