Re:Scientists Back Kiera Wilmot by Tweeting About All the St...
by summerdown2 on Friday May 03, 2013 @03:25PM
(#5652114)
> well, an important part of science (especially chemistry) is knowing appropriate safety procedures.
And an important part of childhood is being able to make mistakes and learn from them without them ruining your life.
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.