Shit the number of things we got away with in my high school electronics and metalworking classes is absurd. Lots of stuff was tested for "explosiveness" or otherwise destructive fun. The teachers, deans, and even the in-school cop used to stop by just to watch our antics.
In chemistry one year I was doing experiments to validate various compositions of gunpowder for burn rate, and was allowed to cary around the components in my bag. The shenanigans when we combined it with some electronics and metalworking were fantastic. We made a little rocket car, then modded it to blow up at the end of the run, then made little poppers to startle the teachers. Not one bit of actual trouble, just a few "talkings to". During the actual demo of the results, we put a little too much in the crucible and it exploded, sending burning shrapnel onto the front row of students' desks. Again, no trouble.
So I'm not sure that it even counts as something that needs reprimand. Curiosity is something that should be rewarded. At worst she should get a "hey, be a bit more careful" talk. And then given access to facilities where she could be more careful while being curious at the same time.
While reading in a textbook of chemistry, ... I came across the statement, 'nitric acid acts upon copper.' I was getting tired of reading such absurd stuff and I determined to see what this meant. Copper was more or less familiar to me, for copper cents were then in use. I had seen a bottle marked 'nitric acid' on a table in the doctor's office where I was then 'doing time.' I did not know its peculiarities, but I was getting on and likely to learn. The spirit of adventure was upon me. Having nitric acid and copper, I had only to learn what the words 'act upon' meant... I put one of them [cent] on the table, opened the bottle marked 'nitric acid'; poured some of the liquid on the copper; and prepared to make an observation. But what was this wonderful thing which I beheld? The cent was already changed, and it was no small change either. A greenish blue liquid foamed and fumed over the cent and over the table. The air in the neighborhood of the performance became colored dark red. A great colored cloud arose. This was disagreeable and suffocating—how should I stop this? I tried to get rid of the objectionable mess by picking it up and throwing it out of the window, which I had meanwhile opened. I learned another fact—nitric acid not only acts upon copper but it acts upon fingers. The pain led to another unpremeditated experiment. I drew my fingers across my trousers and another fact was discovered. Nitric acid acts upon trousers. Taking everything into consideration, that was the most impressive experiment, and, relatively, probably the most costly experiment I have ever performed.
And here you see the other problem with zero-tolerance policy. If someone does something dangerously stupid - like this here lady with her drano bomb in a crowded environment, you don't want Drano splash in your eye - you just cannot come down on the offender in an appropiate way. You can either drop the ten-ton weight of the zero-tolerance policy, now matter how inappropiate, or you hush the matter up. And that often isn't a good alternative.
I also submit that we wouldn't even be talking about it without that tidbit. "Student blew a little something up on campus, got expelled (and probably readmitted later)" might barely make local news. It's the felony that made this go national, and makes it so silly.
A standard American school day is about 7 hours. Sign up for a sport or debate team, or any of drama, glee, or science club, and it's nearer 9 or 10 hours. You might be doing this at school because it's where you are most of the day. Also, most schools have more open space than anything else in town but the public parks.
"She showed horrible, horrible judgement and could have actually hurt somebody."
Having once ridden to the mall down a limited-access highway with my rear on the trunk of a Datsun Z-something and my hands on its roll bar, I think I may have encountered horrible judgment before. Jon Bentley's "Bumper-Sticker Computer Science" column in CACM (collected in Programming Pearls quoted Fred Brooks: "Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."
By all means haul the girl into the principals office and yell at her. But a felony?
That's what being a child is all about. Some people want to see things for themselves.
If I told a younger you about 42.zip, wouldn't you be just a teeny-tiny bit curious about it? Wouldn't you think it would be so funny to email it to a friend of yours at school because of what it did to your machine? What if your school had a zero-tolerance policy for "hacking"?
That may be true, but it does not exonerate her from any wrongdoing. Just because some kids aren't cognizant of what is appropriate or safe to do in certain situations doesn't mean that those things aren't objectively bad or that they shouldn't be discouraged.
She did something that was clearly against school policy and created a dangerous situation. She might not have had the foresight to realize how dumb it was, but that doesn't mean that it was ok to do.
(And believe it or not, the overwhelming majority of students aren't inclined towards harm, and are aware, like everyone else, of the explicit or implicit bounds on what they can do. I've never understood where the perception of kids as oblivious troublemakers with no notion of nor respect for basic social norms and the law.)
To put it simply - she must have been either malicious, irresponsible or dumb. Even considering her age - after all, in just two years she is supposed to be able to legally use cars, firearms and pretty much everything.
While I don't think she deserves felony charges or even expulsion, this isn't a praise-worthy "scientific mistake".
The HCl one is cool because if you have more than a trivial amount of foil, all the HCl reacts with it giving hydrogen gas and harmless aluminum chloride salt as the products.
People keep calling this an explosion or a bomb, it's not really either. The bang comes from the plastic bottle popping from the H2 released, and the H2 recondensing with atmospheric O2 back into H2O which is the source of the "smoke" seen in videos, which is just water vapor.
Those who are talking about "explosions", "bombs", "IEDs", and "incendiary devices" at the police department, and on this and other boards, are exceptionally scientifically ignorant and are not qualified at all to comment on any of this. The real solution here is for those people to take some classes and stop being ignorant and saying nonsense about "bombs" and such.
Performing this reaction is not illegal either in any state's laws I've seen. That's why these cases never go to trial - the authorities try to get the kids to plead guilty as a bargain. What these kids need is a good lawyer and a counter suit for malicious prosecution. And people who don't know science need to shut up about all this and spend more time studying, listening, or just minding their own business rather than falsely claiming expertise in things they are ignorant about.
Widespread ignorance about science, including among intelligent technical and business "trained" people, is very damaging to society.
>Noun
>explosion (plural explosions)
> A violent release of energy (sometimes mechanical, nuclear, or chemical.)
> A bursting due to pressure.
> The sound of an explosion.
> A sudden uncontrolled increase.
> A sudden outburst.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/explosion
>ex·plo·sion
>[ik-sploh-zhuhn]
>noun
>1. an act or instance of exploding; a violent expansion or bursting with noise, as of gunpowder or a boiler ( opposed to implosion ).
>2. the noise itself: The loud explosion woke them.
>3. a violent outburst, as of laughter or anger.
>4. a sudden, rapid, or great increase: a population explosion.
>5. the burning of the mixture of fuel and air in an internal-combustion engine.
Perhaps she didn't have anywhere else to do it?
For clarity, I think all of felony charges and expulsion are stupid and that this is more of an indictment of "zero tolerance". But "I had nowhere better to blow up lye" is lame reasoning.
gavinlynch's premise is (literally) "Right. But you didn't do it during school." (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5651679 )
So which is it? Is the problem that she did something "dangerous" (meaning many of the posters here should have been punished, even if lightly so)? Or is she a special case because she did it at school?
And what if she didn't have anywhere else to do it? Do we know if she actually has a backyard or a playground/park to conduct this experiment? Do we know if she has a home? (I suspect she does, but I haven't seen it stated conclusively).
But even with that in mind, the idea of blowing up a 3L bottle is that you as that pyromaniac teenager probably at least ensured no one else was nearby.
That's a difficult guarantee to make in a school setting, and it's important to realize that it's a separate issue. Blowing things up might even be OK at school, in a controlled setting, people kept a safe distance away, and some idea of what to expect from the reaction. It's all fun and games until it's lye in your friend's eyes.
I have no clue at all whether the student took these precautions as the original article just says it happened on school grounds. That could mean a bathroom or in the middle of an empty field, I have no way to tell, so I won't try to talk to specifics on that.
But in general "I had nowhere else to do activities plausibly harmful to the safety of those around me" is not justification for performing activities plausibly harmful to those around you. So the question to whether she has a backyard or even a home is completely irrelevant.
In think its fairly understandable that if someone gets expelled and charged with felonies for a "slap-on-the-wrist" offense the response is focussed how outrageous the prosecution is, not about the details of whether she should have got a talking to or a detention.
1. The girl heard that mixing drain cleaner (which would have warnings all over the bottle!) with tin foil would do something, but she didn't know what, and decided to find out by conducting a hazardous experiment at school.
2. The girl knew exactly what would happen, and decided to blow some stuff up at school.
Both possibilities would be an exhibit of extremely poor judgement, and I can fully understand why the school would want her to not come back. (Which is what expelling her really means: "we aren't comfortable having you here".)
Even from the perspective of "but it's SCIENCE"... well, an important part of science (especially chemistry) is knowing appropriate safety procedures. Running a reaction that'll inevitably spray hot, corrosive NaOH all over the place is definitely not appropriate.
And an important part of childhood is being able to make mistakes and learn from them without them ruining your life.
After reading it, I feel the reports I have read and watched are misrepresenting at least some of the circumstances of this case. Are there any sober run-downs with a full account of all the circumstances behind the expulsion and criminal charges worth reading?
I’m not saying that people are necessarily wrong to take issue with the actions taken against her, but there seems to be a sin of omission.
But seriously, unless this was sanctioned, why the hell would you be doing this at school?? She wasn't at the flippin' science fair, how exactly did she expect all this to go down? Did she expect the teaching staff to give her a standing ovation for successfully making a "drano bomb" on campus? You do it in the vacant lot across the street, or in the alley, or... literally just about anywhere besides a school.
>>> "She wanted to see what would happen [when the chemicals mixed] and was shocked by what it did. Her mother is shocked, too."
This quote is silly. "She wanted to see what happened"? I don't think she's being intellectually honest here. The chances of mixing those chemicals by happenstance just "to see what would happen"..? Let's not be disingenuous. The only reason you mix those ingredients is if you know what they are capable of together. And extrapolating from that, we can re-write this as "she just wanted to see what the explosion would be like."
And that, is horrible, horrible judgement that deserves to be met with reprimand from the school system. Without being part of an actual science project led by an actual teacher, you can't just light off fireworks in school because the science of it is fun. This is overwhelmingly obvious. That's behavior that can't be tolerated. I just wish we weren't in this insane system of zero tolerance where poor judgement by children in their teens--where ultimately nobody was hurt--can result in their lives being ruined forever.
I've done things like this before, I empathize with all the stories i've read of people doing similar things. But this fist pumping about "oh it's no big deal it's in the name of science!" is a little confusing to me. She showed horrible, horrible judgement and could have actually hurt somebody. I understand that 2 felonies is ridiculous, but I don't know why many of you are acting as if we should be actively -encouraging- this behavior unless it's supervised by someone with authority at the school, and there is an actual learning experience. Many are jumping to the conclusion that this is the innocence of a curious mind that loves science and nothing more. I find it hard to make that jump without seeing more information; there are too few facts in this article.
So I agree with part of your sentiments, and disagree with others where I feel you're thinking irrationally because of your own love of science.