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Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

I prefer chalkboards so much more.

Reason #1: You can tell how much chalk is left.

Reason #2: Not filling up landfills with plastic.

I HATE chalkboards. I hate the feeling of chalk on my hand, I hate the sound chalk makes on a chalkboard, I hate the chalk dust, I hate the feel of chalkboards themselves.

I am on the opposite side of your spectrum. Serious question: Are there any bad experiences from school that you might associate with chalk and chalk boards?

The only thing I hated was to clean the board, if the sponge was old and stinky. But I always liked the idea that chalk is so simple. There is always this feeling of guilt when I have to use a whiteboard, because of the eco balance.

I have no negative experiences related to chalk boards. But I don't like picking up chalk or touching chalk boards. It's something about the texture that makes me shiver, and it gets on my hands. I can avoid marker on my hands by being careful. Oddly, I greatly prefer hearing someone write on a chalk board. The sound is satisfying to me.

I don’t have any bad memories with chalkboards and school. I was a very good student and enjoyed school.

I always remember feeling this way, even when I was very young. I also hated doing projects with construction paper as a kid, too, because of the texture of the paper.

My favorite thing about the old chalkboards was how my elementary school teachers used a damp chamois to wipe them clean, leaving a perfect, even swathe of green where they wiped.

When I was a kid, I would eat chalk. Even so, I hated the sound, the dust, etc. It has nothing to do with experiences; simply the scraping sound and rough, dry, dusty texture.

I have always had the same uncomfortable reaction to chalkboards. Even pencils are enough to give me goosebumps. I prefer a mechanical pencil (less surface area) or a pen.

Mining and shipping chalk isn't environmentally free either.

Virtually no consumption of any kind is environmentally free. But some things are less costly than others (like chalk is to plastic)

I’m the opposite—I love the feeling of chalk on my hands. When I was in grad school, all of the other students tried to keep the chalk off of their hands, but I would take the chalk and rub it on my hands to keep them dry.

Plus flasbacks to school and angry teachers throwing the duster at you for daydreaming.

I'm fairly certain that there exists some combination of smooth surface and oily enough chalk that is more satisfying than a marker, but I don't know what it is.

100% agreed. I can also read whiteboards much more easily.

My god - no!

As a former professor I was once (only a couple years ago) assigned a classroom with a chalkboard and it was easily the worst semester. They look nice when they are clean, but as soon as you erase something it ends up being unreadable.

Not to mention I would end up covered in chalk at the end of a lecture.

That was either a bad chalkboard, bad chalk, or it was poorly maintained. See this video for a reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCroFiwllH8

> [Chalkboards] look nice when they are clean, but as soon as you erase something it ends up being unreadable.

Depends on what chalk you use. If you use chalk from chalk (CaCO3), then yes, it's awful, but if you use chalk from gypsum (CaSO4 hydrate), it's readable on a wet board and erases well.

The modern green-colored boards are junk. When we had our building renovated, we had all the old slate boards removed and set aside, then reinstalled when the classrooms were done. They're pretty good, but I'm not sure they're made anymore. Some have minor dings, and if the surface has gotten "slippery" it's unusable. But I use nothing but chalk every day - many of my colleagues do as well - and it works great. I usually hold white and yellow chalk, writing with white and highlighting with yellow. I even got a box of big sticks (roughly 6" x 1") of blue "railroad" chalk for additional highlighting. The white is Crayola; I don't recall the brand of the yellow.

A chalkboard pro-tip (suggested by a former colleague years ago) - get some of the foot-long "janitorial" erasers. We have them in every classroom. They erase very quickly, and pretty cleanly as well.

[We also have projectors, document cams, and touchscreens (which I think are Cintiqs) in each room for people who prefer them. I think only one room has a whiteboard/smartboard.]

There's also something ridiculously satisfying about cleaning off a chalkboard with a damp sponge.

You can still nerd about chalks, eg Hagomoro chalks: https://gizmodo.com/why-mathematicians-are-hoarding-this-spe...

Unfortunately chalk is an occupational hazard.

You have to have water close to the chalkboards in order to clean them.

> Reason #2: Not filling up landfills with plastic.

Nope, instead filling landfills with tiny pieces of chalk that are now too small to write with. Some dry erase markers can be refilled with ink.

Are you serious? Chalk is a natural substance. Its presence in a landfill is harmless.

Both of you don't seem to understand how a landfill actually works. Plastic and chalk have the same impact in a landfill.

Um, chalk is weakly water soluble, last time I checked. That's significantly different behavior from plastic in a landfill.

Again, you don't seem to understand how a landfill works. Waste materials aren't expected to decompose in a landfill, they are compacted and then covered (usually daily) to form a solid, stable, ground (that's why they are called "landfill", and not just "a gigantic pile of rubbish").

Neither the chalk nor the plastic will decompose. And that's intentional.

So one cubic meter of chalk will have the same impact on a landfill as one cubic meter of plastic.

Landfills are quite far from inert and require active systems to mitigate the result: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leachate

Indeed, but that's undesired; ideally, they should be as inert as possible.

The last thing you want is a landfill collapsing after it was covered and transformed into a park. Often, waterproof polymer liners are used to surround the thrash and prevent water from seeping in and out.

I'm sure this differs from region to region. I'm from a small town that had one landfill site that was in use since decades, and will likely be the only landfill for the town until it runs out of people. For sure quite a bit more low-tech than any metropolis landfill.

A single landfill can have dozens or hundreds of blocks, which are covered and sealed when they become full. So a single landfill can operate for decades while still packing trash into compact blocks.

Everything is a natural terrestrial substance.

I don't think so? Modern plastics have to be created by humans; chalk literally occurs in nature.

It [chalk] forms under reasonably deep marine conditions from the gradual accumulation of minute calcite shells (coccoliths) shed from micro-organisms called coccolithophores. [1]

Not that much different from anything we produce. When our active time as a species is over all of our leftovers will remain as a natural resource like everything else.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalk

What is the harm of plastic?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_pollution

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