Scientists Back Kiera Wilmot by Tweeting About All the Stuff They've Blown Up | Hacker News Reader

Scientists Back Kiera Wilmot by Tweeting About All the Stuff They've Blown Up

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558 pointsjamesbritt219 comments

I "invited" the LAPD Bomb Squad to my High School Graduation when some punk kid crawling on a roof he was not authorized to be on found a little science demonstration a friend and I had set up for the time of graduation and told a gym teacher who took the science demonstration from where it had been safely installed and placed it in his enclosed office and called the LAPD Bomb Squad (on my behalf.)

I was uh, fingered by our Physics professor who ran into me before graduation, and said, "Jerry, what did you do?"

Was pulled off the grad night school bus just before it left for a talk with Nick the Narc, Principal, and LAPD.

We talked for a bit, I explained I hadn't done anything terribly unique, pissed them off by telling them I copied my designs from the Rockford Files (google it), and then they sent me off to Disneyland with the rest of my graduating class.

(Had I known how popular that made me on the bus that night, I would have done it sooner.)

Went to college, found one other engineering student in my small class of engineering students that had done practically the same thing I had done the same week within the same state.

This was back before zero tolerance of course, and back before GWOT, and back before we decided we had to burn down our own village in order to save our village.

Back when folks grew a sense of humor.

So Kiera, I think what is being done to you is a gross abuse.

  So Kiera, I think what is being done to you is a gross abuse.

I could not agree more.

I really cannot parse that first paragraph, can anyone translate? (Or OP change it)

> I "invited" the LAPD Bomb Squad to my High School Graduation when some punk kid crawling on a roof he was not authorized to be on found a little science demonstration a friend and I had set up for the time of graduation and told a gym teacher who took the science demonstration from where it had been safely installed and placed it in his enclosed office and called the LAPD Bomb Squad (on my behalf.)

"Punk kid" was crawling on a roof. He was not authorized to be on said roof. He found the OP's science demonstration that he set up on the roof to go off during graduation. The "punk kid" told a gym teacher, who contained the experiment to his office and called the LAPD. The bomb squad arrived to investigate.

(Where science demonstration is probably something like fireworks, skyrockets, roman candles, m-80s, but OP is being vague, so we can't be sure.)

OP sets up a "science demonstration" on roof of his high school

A "punk kid" discovers said "demonstration"

The "punk kid" tells the gym teacher

The gym teacher takes the "science demonstration" from where it was safely installed to his enclosed office

The gym teacher calls the LAPD bomb squad

He put some sort of device that would make a loud boom up on a roof, intended to coincide with his graduation ceremony.

Another kid found it and reported it to an authority, who put it in his small enclosed office (thereby making it much less safe) and then called the bomb squad.

The author of the parent comment set up his own 'experiment' on the roof of the school that was planned to go off at graduation. I am assuming it was nothing malicious but something 'fun' like fireworks.

Unfortunately for the author, another student climbed the roof and discovered the 'experiment'. He reported it to a gym teacher, who was suspicious of what is was and subsequently called the Bomb Squad, therefore spoiling the graduation 'surprise'.

He'd setup some blow-up stuff (likely fireworks/rockets of some sort) with a friend on high-school roof in preparation of graduation, an other student crawled on the roof, found it, snitched to the principal who called LAPD Bomb Squad and moved said stuff from the roof to his office.

He worded it as if his "experiment" had been an invitation to the LAPD.

What was the rooftop science demonstration?

Unspecified but probably an exothermic reaction that would release a large puff of smoke.

I put a little salt water in a 3 liter bottle (remember those... Shasta, baby) and melted 2 wires through the cap. I connected those to a 12 volt battery and let that cook until it was good and bulging, flipped it over and then used the firing coil from a motocycle to make a spark between the wires.

It made a much bigger boom than we had expected. I believe the hole in the ground it left was nearly 2 feet deep. I think I was 13.

Elegant. Particularly for thirteen.

I'm calling bullshit. I did that many times and never blew any significant hole in the ground (though because of impatience I started using 220V -- not a great idea). Yes it makes a loud boom, but a 2 foot hole no way.

The joy of being 12/13 is that you're still in that cusp between child and semi-adult. You've got enough motor skills and knowledge to be dangerous, but still have the childlike sense of awe that can make things look significantly larger than they are!

> still have the childlike sense of awe that can make things look significantly larger than they are!

Considering some of the fishermen[0] I know, that one never goes away.

[0] and guys I subsequently shared a locker room with

I agree. Though only if he used a plastic bottle. My father and I did this when I was in middle school. He (stupidly) held it in his hand. All it did was make a very loud boom, and not a two foot hole in his arm.

1) Your 220 made mostly steam and little browns gas.

2) We had partially buried the bottle before setting it off.

Certainly, that experiment didn't last more than a tenth of a second. Lighting a 3L bottle produces about 20kJ if my calculation is correct, so if you bury the bottle in sand or other loose soil I can see how it can move that, but well then most of the hole is because you dug it. If you have a bottle full you can safely light that with the cap off while holding the bottle in your hand, though I wouldn't advise doing the same with the cap on (you certainly won't lose your hand or anything, but it may be painful).

For the people wondering, here is a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmcaC0vxaSo

Interesting. Considering we never took the cap off and lit it off with the spark, wouldn't the amount of energy in the bottle go up with the pressure? Some people were saying here that a 3 liter might take as much as 250psi. We waited until the bottle was visibly distended. How would the calculation vary with pressure? I'd be interested to know the best(worst?) case scenario!

> Considering we never took the cap off and lit it off with the spark, wouldn't the amount of energy in the bottle go up with the pressure?

I have been playing a bit with a potato/hairspray cannon. If you don't have a good seal (that's why you use a potato), you get no boom. I tried to shoot snow, but it would just go hsssst.

I'm thinking the initial combustion raises the pressure enough for the fuel mixture to detonate, and if the seal is't good enough, the fuel will just burn gradually.

The calculation is already best/worst case. I simply calculated the enthalpy of 3 liters of the mixture. The energy due to the pressure buildup is negligible. If you didn't make sure that there is no air in the bottle, then the energy would in fact be considerably lower simply because then the bottle is mostly air (the way to make sure is by submerging and filling the bottle with water and wait until the bottle is completely filled with gas, and then closing the cap under water).

BTW, speaking of pressure it's unfortunate that these days the soda bottles are so thin & weak, some can't even stand 5 bar anymore, they used to be a lot thicker and stronger.

> 3 liter bottle (remember those... Shasta, baby)

Sometimes store-brand colas will still have 3-liter bottles. They are pretty good for bicycle-pump/bottle rockets, if anyone is interested in that sort of thing.

Make sure the mouth of the bottle is the proper size for your pump assembly. Sometimes 3L bottles have extra wide mouths.

Right. But you didn't do it during school.

edit: Do I really need to point out that 2 felonies for this is obviously a gross overreaction by authorities and I hope all charges are dropped? That said, if you don't agree that it was universally horrible judgement to make a drano bomb during school, then there really isn't much to discuss between us and you can carry on downvoting (although I hope none of you are in charge of my future children). my longform response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5651593

Oh, come on, having horrible judgement is the whole point of being a kid. The process of growing up and becoming an adult is all about learning and acquiring good judgement. How can you expect people to gain the judgement that comes with experience without allowing them to gain that experience by trying things, some of which will turn out to be mistakes? How are they supposed to know which things are going to be the mistakes without trying some of them and thereby learning the patterns?

I once did more or less the same thing as Ms Wilmot did, and you bet I did it during school, and I didn't even bother to tell anyone about my intentions first! I set up an apparatus under one of the fume hoods in the back of the chemistry lab, dissolved a bunch of aluminum, captured the hydrogen in a balloon, and then blew the whole thing up. It made a hell of a big bang, shattered a bunch of glassware, and startled the hell out of my lab-mates. Bad judgement? Well, yeah. Duh. But I didn't actually hurt anyone, and I sure learned something from the experience, and I'll bet that all my classmates learned something from it too, without having to deal with the embarrassment and clean-up that landed on my shoulders for being the nitwit who tried it.

Just imagine how fucked I'd have been if I'd had to face felony charges after that. My whole life might have been different, my whole software engineering career derailed before it had even started. What a stupid waste that would have been. What a stupid waste it is going to be for all of us if this idiotic treatment of Ms Wilmot is allowed to stand.

Did you read my post? I do not agree with these felony charges at all. I don't know what the reprimand should be, whether it's a lecture or 1 detention or expulsion. But I know the felony charges are wrong based on the few facts we currently have.

I did read your post, and I don't agree that any formal reprimand was necessary. What did she do that deserves punishment? She found chemistry so interesting that she went beyond her classes and came up with her own experiment, which taught her something she hadn't expected. Cool! Give her extra credit, put her in AP classes, sign her up for community college - this is exactly the kind of curiosity and independent initiative we need to encourage, not punish.

I think that was gavinlynch's point: there's got to be some kind of discipline, but a felony is insane. And by discipline, I'd imagine something like what happened to you would be reasonable.

"Ok, someone could have gotten hurt. Be more careful next time, and now clean up your mess!" With the severity of the lecture following the actual damage.

Kids should be encouraged to involve themselves with the immensely powerful forces so easily available today - but they've got to fear it (as in respect it). They need to know how destructive it can be, and then _harness that_. That's my $0.02 on it.

In the abstract, the severity of the lecture should not necessarily follow the actual damage - sometimes it should follow the potential for damage, perhaps? For instance, when I was a kid, I ran out into the road to chase a ball. A car stopped about 1 meter from me. Nobody and nothing was hurt (unless you count terrifying the driver and my mother on the sidewalk watching). Was I in trouble? Hell yes. If my mother had said 'well, nobody was hurt, no problem' then how was I supposed to learn how stupid it was?

Yup, you're right. In industry, that's called a near miss. It's treated with the motions as though you were hit by that car, but none of the consequences are enacted, since nothing in fact happened (YMMV). Basically, it's a freebie: lessons are learned without anyone getting hurt, which is about as good as it gets.

Near misses must be analysed and acted upon to be a useful force in accident or disaster prevention. Such actions can include changes to the facility, changes to protocol, but also educating or punishing workers.

As an example: Misconduct causing a near miss, such as smoking or using open fire near chemical storage, is grounds for instant dismissal, even in the "socialist" countries of NW Europe.

My junior high science teacher would regularly fill a two liter bottle (with the base removed) with hydrogen generated by magnesium tablets in hydrochloric acid, then ignite the mixture by placing a match above a hole in the lid. During school. My high school physics teacher did something similar with gas from the countertop outlets and a coffee can.

Cool story. But you're talking about an official-, adult-, teacher-sanctioned event. Big difference. And to my main point: children literally don't have the neural capacity to make the judgement of when it is, and is not, appropriate to mix ingredients together that will make a blast of potentially concussive force :p

This much seems obvious to me.

I think people are mostly mentioning the "sanctioned" stories to avoid the potential for incriminating anyone. Besides, a mild rebellious streak might be a good thing for a scientist, kids are smarter than people give them credit, and excessive deference to authority is probably more harmful than a little curiosity gone awry. I think smart kids need to do more without asking, especially if they come from a restrictive environment that wouldn't give permission anyway.

Yes, you do need to point it out because this story is the perfect storm of naivete from HN. It sparks all the irrational nerves of the pro-science crowd with the hints of anti-science, the 'man' keeping the 'hacker' down storyline, the 'school is so structured it sucks' crowd, and definitely the anti-government group here. And we can't forget the 'Aaron Swartz didn't do anything wrong' crowd.

Sure, this story has an overzealous prosecutor looking for an easy score and to set an example, but the way people talk you'd think she was following teacher instruction in a lab and an accident happened and for some reason she's being persecuted for it.

She should've known better and done what the rest of us did - set the thing off in the forest behind the school.

The problem is the potential for felony as an adult. That's life-ruining stuff there, and people don't want to go soft on protesting that sort of severity. Without malicious intent, it's hard to rationalize it as criminal behavior, rather than

... rather than foolish recklessness. Plus a lot of us remember having far fewer rules, like complaining about not being able to bring knives to school (talked my way out of losing my multitool in high school). People feel strongly on What's-the-World-Coming-To topics, so expect some passion. It'd be a bit worrying if we didn't see it.

I strongly disagree. Its much better that kids do this during school, than trying to sneak around some kids backyard when the parents are out.

Say that all our fears come to true and something do go wrong and a kid get caught in the blast. If its in school, there are adults in ear shot with knowledge and tools to try handle the situation, and the kid won't just lay there and bleed out while his friends freak out while thinking about the consequences.

You can't prevent children from sometimes having a horrible judgement. You can however give them a safe place.

You can however give them a safe place.

Trying to give a "safe" place is, unfortunately, part of the problem. Instead of it being a place where kids can be helped if they get hurt, it has morphed into a (impossible) place where kids can't get hurt. Then, if something shatters that illusion, it's "off with her head!"

Blew tons of stuff up when I was in middle school. Didn't blow anything up at school, as I didn't want to, you know, get in trouble.

Okay, if you want to be pedantic about it ... Kiera didn't do her experiment "during school" either. It was 7am.

No. I have no desire to be pedantic about it. That's rather boring and lazy from an intellectual perspective.

We used 2 liter bottles as the gas expansion chamber on one of our battle bots. They were good to 250 psi until some folks cut back on the amount of plastic. Then we discovered you could buy bottles headed for 'desert communities' (like Las Vegas) and those bottles had a higher pressure rating. So get your soda in Vegas kids for the most bang!

> 'desert communities' (like Las Vegas) and those bottles had a higher pressure rating.

Any theory on why?

They get hot... and pop!

Had this happen to me with plastic bottles and aluminum cans that were sitting outside on pallets at a grocery store in the summer.

You know what's more awesome?

Baggie bombs. The Oxy-Acetylene mixture for cutting steel, fill a ziploc bag with it. Add a few inches of newspaper, light it, run.

My uncle did this with trash bags. Big boom.

I did as well (50:50 with oxygen), ignited with a shot from a roman candle. Close enough to knock me over when I was 14. Realized how fucking stupid it was when I thought about static electricity and trash bags....

> static electricity

My dad did bag bombs in his twenties. He was worried about them exploding while he handeled them, so he put on wool mittens to protect the hands...

My chemistry teacher did this with hydrogen and oxygen inside of the classroom. It was one of those "desk waste basket" trash bags rather than a proper 50-galloner but even so it was so loud I was surprised the windows didn't blow out. I think she stuck with party balloons for that demonstration from then on.

Empty soda or beer cans full of oxygen and acetylene, yee haw. It sends the can tens of feet into the air, makes a loud bang like a gunshot, and makes grown men giggle like little girls.

It works even better with punching bag balloons.

Around freshman year of college -- yes, college -- my roomate got an order of Omaha steaks. They were packed in dry ice. I took the dry ice; packed it in a two liter bottle; put in hot water; and, put the cap on. I stood there for about 10 seconds before I realized that a) there was no reason to think the force would be directed out the top like my weird cartoon original conception implied and b) it would take a lot of force to rip apart the two liter bottle.

Immediately, I threw the bottle into our bathroom tub and me and the friend that was there with me stood about 10 feet outside the door. After two or three minutes, I started feeling silly. Nothing was going to happen. About 10 seconds later, it blew up. The metal part faucet in the bathtub was bent, and the shockwave had enough force to knock me and my friend down (although, it could have just been fear) and I couldn't hear for about two hours.

This was around 2003. Not one person came by my dorm to investigate. I think if it was now, I would have been arrested. Admittedly, I was stupid, but not maliciously so.

ahh, dry ice, water and closed containers. It's a classic. I blew up stuff using this method less than a year ago.

Dry ice can be hard to acquire in some places.

Luckily liquid hydrochloric acid based drain cleaners and aluminum foil are readily available everywhere and achieve the same results.

2Al + 6HCl -> 2AlCl3 + 3H2 = Boom.

The only caveat is that it throws the unreacted acid everywhere, and it's pretty strongly exothermic, but I mean, you're building a small bomb so...yeah.

My friends and I set a tree on fire once just with some chlorine and sugar.

It was a regular ritual in my hometown... gather the boys, pitch a few dollars together and buy some chlorine from the local big box stores that sold it as pool cleaner.

If you mixed the chlorine and sugar together in a water bottle, and then later added water, it would explode with an impressive pop after a few seconds.

We were carrying a few of these bottles in a backpack one night when suddenly, I heard a hiss.

Apparently water isn't needed for a chlorine, sugar, water bomb... the jostling of the two powders together in the backpack was enough to start the reaction.

By the time my friend could get the bag off his back and up to his ear to listen for himself, one of the bottles exploded.

Said friend proceeded to throw the backpack as far as he could, as we all scattered in different directions.

We met up later, and walked home past where we had thrown the bag earlier.

All that remained was a scorched tree and a few firemen.

I think that was the last time we dabbled in that sort of "fun".

By the way, my friend's hearing is fine.

Used to use pool acid and foil in a 2 liter soda bottle. Poor the acid in the bottle, pop a crumpled rod of foil in, seal the bottle, walk away.

The foil takes a few seconds to start reacting so you have time to seal the bottle. It gets hot so the bottle starts expanding and finally pops.

One time the bottle expanded but didn't pop so after waiting for a minute or two I walked up. As soon as I touched the cap it popup off and covered me with acid. I ran to the closest house and used the hose to pour water all over me.

I'm guessing either because it was spent from reacting with the foil or because it's made for pools and not all that strong that I didn't get any burns. That was the last time i did it.

I was playing with electrolysis a lot when I was 8-9. Probably just as well I didn't think to capture the hydrogen and blow it as I'm not sure my parents would have appreciated explosions in my room.

I'm not quite sure why I wouldn't have gon there - whether I just thought it too risky, or didn't realize the possibilities. I did have a series of books titled something like "hobby books for boys" my dad got in the early 60's when he was a kid that included a lot of chemistry covering various ways to make home-made fireworks and blow stuff up, which were all decidedly not considered all that acceptable to publish any more when I got them in the 80's, and I believe that's where I got my inspiration to play with electrolysis (my chemistry equipment was all originally my dads from the 60's too...).

I did instead have great fun covering one of my moms silver spoons with a nice layer of lead instead after using it to stir the brine, though. Not popular. I did suggest to her that I could probably fix it by using the spoon as one of the electrodes, but she wouldn't listen.

I’ll make an exception to being vague about my personal details (although this is my personal HN account) and chime in with something eerily relevant.

At my school, we literally had a chemistry teacher who went by the name Bombe Bo (Bob the Bomber, if you fancy a quasi-translation of the Danish moniker). The teachers amiably called him by the name as well—possibly because he once set an adult’s hair on fire during one of his experiments.

He was, is, possibly the most beloved teacher at the school, and he was known for—you guessed it!—blowing things up. The man would seize any opportunity to make something go boom, and we all loved him for it.

At our final class with him before graduation, he assigned his students to mix, I believe, bromide and acetone (and some). The students just saw it as another experiment, but as some of you have already realized

    ... unbeknownst to them, the students
    had created tear gas!

To add insult to injury, he had brought a camera to snap photos of everyone’s faces. The guy was a black-belt in pranks.

It was inconceivable for students not to love the guy—he was also one of the nicest people in the world and never had to scold anyone—ever. Because as hard as the course material could be, it was impossible to hate him—and chemistry.

Wow, that's pretty funny that your chemistry teacher would go so far as to violate the Geneva convention for the sake of a prank.

I'm sorry, what? How in the world does an international convention on warfare apply to a high school experiment?

Meant in the spirit of http://www.howtospotapsychopath.com/2012/01/07/domestic-chem..., I presume.

Alright that makes more sense. I totally haven't read that, and it got a chuckle out of me. :)

I mostly meant it as a joke about how if his students were enemy combatants he would be a war criminal for that.

Thats fantastic.

This is a page out of the anarchists cookbook. Ah, to be young again... ;)

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.

This is exactly what I have been telling people. She knew exactly what she was doing.

You must be able to relate to the idea that she knew what she was doing, knew the likely immediate result, but didn't think it through to a time 10-30 years away when she would be tarred with a serious convictions and it was preventing her from finding work. It is possible here for a lot of arguments to be correct - she both knew the likely result, but failed to appreciate all the results. A failure to see the broader picture (the criminal conviction). Given that idea of a conviction is surprising people here, it is unlikely that she considered this angle.

why the hell would you be doing this at school?

Perhaps she didn't have anywhere else to do it?

We wouldn't accept that as an excuse for anything else considered dangerous, why should we accept that here.

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.

The premise of the thread is hackers saying "yes, I blew stuff up when I was a kid"

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).

I'm referring to your discussion point, not the thread-at-large.

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.

> 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.

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.

This is a fantastic comment I hope stays at the top.

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.

I use to do this when I was a kid but with pool HCl instead of drano. I even did it once at school (very far away from anyone or anything) and I consider myself lucky to not get caught or punished. There was a teacher that knew it was probably me when it went off, but they just looked at me and rolled their eyes. I knew immediately I had shown some pretty damn poor judgement.

While I don't think she deserves felony charges or even expulsion, this isn't a praise-worthy "scientific mistake".

According to the police report, it was HCl, toilet bowl cleaner.

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.

I think it fits the definition of an explosion.

>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.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/explosion

Bingo. Even if we don't start out with the assumption that she knew what the result would be (which she probably did)

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.

> 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.

I don't object to discipline. Expulsion is a situational thing that I can't judge. I do object to the felony.

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.

It's funny, our system is lenient enough to give teens who commit horrible crimes such as burglary, sexual assault, and even homicide a 2nd chance. Even if she knew exactly what she was doing, even if she risked putting other people in danger, why doesn't she deserve forgiveness? This should not be a felony issue, this should not be a national news story. At worst it's a student who needs a good talking to. But excluding a student from civilized society, which is basically what is being done here, is a grossly extreme response.

You know, even if she had been told it would pressurize the bottle until it ruptured with a loud bang, it is valid scientific curiosity to want to see it and validate it for herself.

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.

> At worst she should get a "hey, be a bit more careful" talk.

https://www.google.com/search?q=reprimand

I thought the term carried a connotation of "marks in a record" or other paperwork - and in governmental bureaucracies it usually does mean this (schools included). I literally mean no official record - a verbal warning.

Yes, it does normally have a connotation of formal censure. He was trying to score a lazy 'gotcha' point and failed.

> And that, is horrible, horrible judgement

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's what being a child is all about.

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.)

This "child" was 16 y.o. At this age we knew enough chemistry to laugh at people who made it to local news by blowing up their toilet with some creative mix of household cleaners instead of doing such things ourselves in school.

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.

You seem to agree that Kierra's prosecution is grossly out-of-line but terribly worried that we might forget that she maybe, should have got a slap on the wrist.

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.

Ira Remsen:

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.

"why the hell would you be doing this at school?"

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?

Do you understand the difference between theory and experiment?

Too bad she didn't make a dry-ice bomb. I think a lot of states don't categorize it properly as an explosive device because it is caused by a phase-change and not a chemical reaction.

Oh and response to the officials that said this:

>Their response: kids should learn that "there are consequences to their actions."

That is a disingenuous response that could be used for any punishment. Kids can learn about consequences without needing a draconian punishment. No one every suggested not punishing her.

My high school had a dry ice fogger in the theatre department for making the close to the ground fog effect for productions.

Basically, it was an 80 gallon drum with a heating element in it, a basket that could be lowered and tubes for the fog to escape. You heated the water, then put the dry ice in the basket, clamped the top down tight, then plunged the dry ice into the water. Makes great fog that is mostly CO2 gas.

Well, if you don't clamp the top down tight enough, it'll go flying off, throwing hot water everywhere. This happened during one production and did quite a bit of set damage. Thankfully nobody was scalded badly.

Note, don't use this if you're doing a musical with an orchestra, or the fog flowing into the orchestra pit can result in woozy, oxygen deprived musicians.

Well, it's not out of the question that the pit orchestra might appreciate that effect.

What was the necessity of clamping down the top, given that there were open tubes for the fog (and pressure) to escape?

The gas expansion is extremely fast - you're basically turning a few pounds of dry ice from solid to gas + water vapor in a matter of seconds.

With the pressures involved, if the top isn't on securely, shooting the top off is the path of least resistance.

We used to use a different method of piping standard dog machine fog through ice to make the same effect. Slightly messy but probably without the danger of suffocating people.

Heck, my high school science teacher brought dry ice and a bunch of little plastic bottles to the last-day-of-school party!

My dad is the headmaster of a K-8 school (that's 5-13ish years old) and the graduating class bought him a .22 rifle which they presented during graduation in the school building. He said "Well, you can tell this isn't a public school!" :)

"No one every suggested not punishing her."

Ok, I suggest not punishing her. Now it's not "no one".

Second. This is not teaching anyone anything or modifying behavior constructively. This is destroying her life.

The amount of times my friends and I made pressure bombs (in a 600ml bottle) using NaOH and Al (exactly what was described in the article, and frankly, my first thought when reading this) at school and at home I can't even count on two hands. It was initially shown to us by our Chemistry teachers as a method for creating H2. The real danger isn't the expanding/produced hydrogen, it is the highly basic solution that is still reacting within the bottle. If you're nearby, and it explodes, depending on your volumes, the resultant spray can be seriously ... painful. Safety goggles and a nearby water source is a must have. Been a few times where I've rushed to the shower after my face started bleeding from corrosive spray after a mis timed attempt at this... If she was just capturing the hydrogen and igniting it... then it was completely harmless.

I convinced my little brother to do a science experiment where we measured the explosive power of black powder by seeing how high it would launch a metal ball out of a tube ( We basically made a vertically fixed homemade cannon ) He brought our apparatus the balls and black powder to his presentation. Had he done this today I imagine he would have been arrested for possessing a weapon of mass destruction.

You may jest, but in a ridiculous turn of events modern US law classifies all destructive devices (such as guns with a bore of more than 2 inches) as Weapons of Mass Destruction, under Title 18 USC § 2332a

NJ has classified bb guns as firearms. If you are a 17 year old kid goofing around with a bb gun and shoot your friend (who hasn't?), you can be tried as an adult (felonies) for firearms violations.

http://www.mercercountycriminallawyer.com/Trenton-NJ-BB-Gun-...

To hear my dad tell it, "back in the day" kids just had shoot-outs in the backyard with Red Ryder BB guns...

I've been shot with a BB gun a few times (late 80s, early 90s). Now, the way the law is that would be prison time for the shooter in NJ.

Chemical engineer here. What haven't I done?

- Shattered stuff with liquid nitrogen: PB&J sandwich, bouncy balls, etc.

- Melted various metals in crucibles over Fisher burners. Got burned a few times when I didn't realize the crucible lids were still hot.

- Made ferrofluid. Not particularly dangerous, but very cool stuff. Search for it on Youtube.

- Thermite reactions. These were fun. You had to start them with sparklers (or a lit magnesium strip).

- Lit hydrogen bubbles (we used to have "fire Friday")

- Chlorine and sodium reaction to make salt

- Nitrogen triiodide (an explosive; can be detonated with one alpha particle)

- Aluminum sulfur reaction: This one was interesting; the science lab book specified a small zinc sulfur reaction. I wanted to up the ante with aluminum and sulfur. Per the Wikipedia page which I read after the experiment:

"This reaction is extremely exothermic and it is not necessary or desirable to heat the whole mass of the sulfur-aluminium mixture; (except possibly for very small amounts of reactants). The product will be created in a fused form; it reaches a temperature greater than 1100 °C and may melt its way through steel. The cooled product is very hard."

Yeah, my friend and I finely ground up a HUGE batch of that aluminum and sulfer in a mortar and lit it in the fume hood. It looked like a rocket was going off. What we also didn't realize was that the product, aluminum sulfide, should NOT go in water, and water is exactly where I dumped the stuff. It stunk up the lab with hydrogen sulfide. I wonder how many brain cells I killed with that.

- Burned some chromium compound. Can't remember what it was, but when I showed the instructor the product, he got really upset. He began scooping it out of the sink because apparently I'd created a carcinogen.

- Found a container of mercuric (II) nitrate. It was the one thing the instructor wouldn't let us play with.

That was all in high school. Mostly in the fume hood. College was a lot more boring (we had to wear goggles and gloves to handle Kool-aid), although I did accidentally spill a container of concentrated sulfuric acid all over the place in organic synth lab.

Potassium permanganate + Glycerin was my go-to as an amateur experimentalist in middle school / high school.

My second favorite was common electrolysis, filling the garage with the smell of chlorine from impurities in the tap water / whatever container I was using at the time.

I wonder if kids get to experience the unbridled joy of discovering chemistry on their own, nowadays.

Of course, I'm sure parents are better off. My poor mother rushed me to the ER far too many times.

If the government wants leaders in STEM, and, say, rocketry, they have to let people play.

Heck, even if you're looking for new military ordnance engineers... Nobody gets good at building things that blow things up without playing with things that blow up.

Play is important; it's how we learn.

The government does not want free thinkers who explore their curiosity designing its bombs. What the government wants are people who do what they are told, who follow procedures, and who do not ask unnecessary questions. The government wants the kids who only made little explosions when their chemistry teacher told them to and only using the chemicals they were told to use.

In a debate between what the government wants and what the rest of the world needs, I'm going to go with the latter, pretty much every time.

The post I was replying to suggested that the government should not be punishing someone who could do great work in relevant chemistry work. My point was that the government may have a need for rockets and bombs, but that they will find the chemists with a conservative approach to science and work ethics rather than free thinkers. I do agree that the world needs more free thinkers, but the government does have substantial power in determining what sort of people will do society's intellectual work.

For what it's worth, this is a problem that goes back a long way:

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

Socrates should have never even been at that trial; I've got to say that I have always found Socrates' response to Crito to be immensely dissatisfying.

It seems to me that it assumes the true nature of the law will never take take one by surprise, and (although it may have been practical at the time) I think it is a mistake to think that opting out of the law before being a victim of it is a practical thing to expect of people. His reasoning is basically just a more principled cry of "if you don't like it, leave it":

"we further proclaim to any Athenian by the liberty which we allow him, that if he does not like us when he has become of age and has seen the ways of the city, and made our acquaintance, he may go where he pleases and take his goods with him. None of us laws will forbid him or interfere with him. Any one who does not like us and the city, and who wants to emigrate to a colony or to any other city, may go where he likes, retaining his property."

Immensely dissatisfying. I cannot stand Plato's telling of that entire series of events.

The government wants those things, so long as those who make it are white, nerdy guys with a perfect school record.

In other words, people who are not the least dangerous.

My Dad was a police officer. Had he chosen to indict me for all the stuff I destroyed in the name of science, I'd still be in jail.

Luckily, when he was young, he did similarly stupid things (like chopping down a tree...onto his house). Whenever I'd cause particular mayhem, he'd take me to the local library to learn where my latest experiment had gone badly. Heck, thanks to his good attitude and interest in my passions, by the time I was 14, I could have gotten a job fixing VCRs, computers, televisions, radios, etc.

I really think the Mythbusters need to weigh in on this. Adam Savage seems to have a big presence in science education, and I can't think of anyone more qualified to speak on the matter.

I was just listening to Adam Savage's "Still Untitled" podcast where he talks about blowing stuff up as the least favorite part of what he does.

That's not to say he won't come to her defense, but I was surprised to hear that.

I think Jamie is the explosives guy. After all, two of his more well-known lines are "Jamie wants big boom!" and "When in doubt, C4!" I always got the impression that Adam liked building things more than he liked blowing them up. But I'm sure he enjoys a good fireball nonetheless.

I was of this opinion too. MythBuster's always been known for "these guys try science for real" and "these guys blow stuff up and use real guns!!!".

I remember a story some years ago when one of their test explosions was bigger than predicted and it ended in damage property in a nearby town but AFAIR they didn't get in law-related trouble.

Adult-induced fear should not be a reason for stifling childhood-inate curiosity. I remember as a kid we were extremely good at taking apart fireworks, putting them into other objects, and blowing those things up. Was that a good idea? Well, we were careful about and we had lots of fun and no one got hurt, so maybe yes, maybe no. Most importantly: at the end of the day it was just another way to explore the world and revel in the wonder.

It pains me to see kids beaten down by adults who may never have experienced that thrill of experimentation and the simple "whoa!" that comes from blowing something up. Clearly missing out on that has damaged those adults in some fundamental way.

(*I'll always feel a bit bad about blowing up my friend's sister's Barbie Dream Camper in this way...)

Tell her it was a concept visualisation for Breaking Bad, but that the idea was stolen.

The part that is being missed here is the implications of a felony arrest:

- can no longer vote

- won't be able to get financial aid

- can't go to a state college

- can't get a loan

In addition, being expelled means that she will have to move in order to continue school.

Educators who don't understand the implications of what they are doing are demonstrating terrible judgment.

You can read more: http://www.cfjj.org/arrestedfutures.php

> won't be able to get financial aid

This is huge. To anyone who believes this punishment is appropriate, keep in mind that it means she will not go to college (unless her family is wealthy).

When I was 14, my friends and I used to blow up snowbanks in the backyard with these all the time. However, we were not doing it in the name of science. We were doing it because we were pre "Jackass" skater dickheads. I believe we found the instructions in either Thrasher or Big Brother magazine.

I can't help but think the "science" angle is actually working against this young girl. This was obviously not a science project, and there are few things rednecks hate more than being told how to approach their business by people who think they are smarter than they are. It would be more beneficial to donate to the girl's defense fund than to pay lip service to some phony "it was science" defense.

"This was obviously not a science project"

That's not obvious to me at all. It's obvious to me that it was science, a chemistry experiment in particular. Hard to see how it wasn't.

Yeah, I'm a member of a hackerspace which is almost entirely made up of PhD's, engineers, security specialists, artists, creatives, inventors and innovators and almost all of what we do is related to fire and explosions (and electronics and art!). So yeah. Total support for this lady. I would contribute to a defense fund or college fund.

I emptied out the entire science building by reducing DMSO. You've smelled nothing until you've smelled DMS.

As bad as/worse than ammonia?

I caused a small brush fire playing with an Estes rocket. Fire department told me "try to be more careful."

Oh yeah, I also caused a small explosion at school by filling a water bottle with LN2.

I didn't start a fire but I remember launching those things when I was a kid. Did it in Boy Scouts and several after-school programs. Can you even launch those things these days without violating some sort of protected airspace or getting in trouble for some other nonsense rule?

Yes. IIRC they tightened up the laws about buying those engines after 9/11 but later loosened them again.

If you are launching large rockets then the FAA has some rules, but that is nothing new.

I remember hooking a D motor up to a guide wire (no rocket!) and firing it off in a lot behind my friend Jason's house. It took the predictably chaotic trajectory and again predictably shot straight through the closed window at a house under construction across the otherwise empty lot. I think we stuck around long enough to make sure that the place didn't catch fire, which, in retrospect, was probably the dumbest thing of all.

Good times.

That's almost exactly how I started the fire. We launched the rocket several times, progressively losing more parts of it. First the nose cone. Then the body. All we had left was one last rocket, so we launched the rocket alone without a body. It sort of spiralled into the air. It didn't make it very high---maybe about 100 feet---then fell into the brush. I think the parachute charge went off after the engine landed in the brush.

Worse than cadaverine or putrescine? :)

Yes. Make a great way to get bad guys out of a building.

From wikipedia:

> It penetrates the skin very readily, giving it the unusual property for many individuals of being secreted onto the surface of the tongue after contact with the skin and causing a garlic-like taste in the mouth.

You can taste it after having skin contact with it?

Yup. It is crazy stuff.

One of my father's co-workers had emptied out one of the better high schools in Mexico City by synthesizing essence of skunk and releasing it appropriately. I think that he and his collaborators got a week's suspension. This would have been sometime in the 1940s.

Someone did that at my highschool with butyric acid. The smell was so bad that a few people added to it by actually vomiting.

I am glad to see that this is getting proper attention, probably enough for Kiera's life not to be totally ruined by it.

The exact same punishment was given to me for doing the same thing in 2004: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5637272

Before I ever did a science experiment, I had to write a lab report and detail (1) what I was going to do, (2) how I was going to do it, and (3) what I expected the results to be.

If you aren't following the scientific method[1] and are just skipping straight to the "lets see what happens" step, are you really doing science? or are you just blowing things up?

What happens when a student does one of these "science experiments" and actually blows up a classroom (or bathroom or playground) and kills a bunch of kids?

Does it matter if he did it on purpose? Was he just doing science? Kids being kids? Was the teacher to blame? Were the parents to blame? If it was your kid that was maimed/killed in the explosion, would you even care if it was a "science experiment"?

On the flip side, is it worth worrying about the rare case of a rogue-science-experiment-gone-wrong?

Is it worth worrying about the signal sent to aspiring "school massacre-ists" by saying "You can get away with blowing stuff up at school as long as you say it's for science."

Maybe not.

I hope my kids are responsible with science. I hope the people around my kids are responsible with science.

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

To paraphrase Adam Savage, who was quoting someone else...

"The difference between fooling around and science is whether you write down the results after you're done."

Of course, to say that you're not learning if you're not writing it down is wrong too.

Lab reports and notebooks are not what makes "Science". Science is developing a hypothesis, performing an experiment, observing the results, and re-evaluating your hypothesis. That's it. It doesn't matter if you write it down or turn it in.

Kids do science all the time.

> If you aren't following the scientific method[1] and are just skipping straight to the "lets see what happens" step, are you really doing science? or are you just blowing things up?

So nothing before the 17th century was science?

> is it worth worrying about the signal sent to aspiring "school massacre-ists" by saying "You can get away with blowing stuff up at school as long as you say it's for science."

No it is not worth worrying about that signal, just like it isn't worth abolishing free speech to get anything remotely looking like bomb making instructions off the internet. Cut your nose to spite your face.

Considering the amount of nonsense I got up to in 11th grade chemistry lab including but not limited to lighting various metals on fire to see what colour they burned and handling hydrochloric acid, a little aluminum foil and toilet bowl cleaner should have been met with a slap on the wrist and possibly a talk from someone in the science department about what mixing chemicals you're not familiar with can do.

It was definitely not a smart choice to do it at school, and she was definitely aware of the fact that what she was going to do was going to go bang. Allowing for that, though - kids are curious, and with the advent of the Internet, if a kid's curiosity is piqued enough by something they saw on YouTube, I expect they're gonna try it, whether it's a Drano bomb or Mentos in Diet Coke.

Were I the teacher I'd have provided a controlled demonstration of why not to do things and some resources for experimenting safely. Expelling the poor girl just discourages her from experimenting with anything ever again.

> discourages her from experimenting with anything ever again

Maybe that's exactly the desired result for the sort of people who choose a bureaucratic career, and maybe it's exactly such people who decide her fate.

We tried making thermite, but got sloppy and used pellets rather than powder. Our chemistry teacher (whom we did not inform of this) had fooled with stuff that went bang when he was a kid.

I work at a hardware company - high-current and high-voltage power electronics. Things occasionnaly blow-up, but there have never been any serious consequences, because eveyone has very safe working habits, even the individuals who act like they don't care. Unfortunately this is not always the case for our clients..

While the felony charges are clearly overkill, I think it is counterproductive to defend a moment of very bad judgment by calling it science.

Bad judgement and science are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they have quite a colorful shared history.

The only reason to say that this was not both seems to be a (frankly, rather suspicious) attitude about the likelihood that this girl had curiosity about science.

During a chemistry class where we were doing batteries by inserting metals into acid to light a small light bulb, i theorized that since the voltage depended on the area of contact with the metal, then using steel wool would make mads voltage.

it did not work at first (maybe i had anything that would start a current with steel, don't really remember the details, or any chemistry from high school) but eventually i got some current (maybe some of the previous metal rod was still in the solution?). the light bulb wasn't burning brighter then before, but the part of the steel wool that was out of the acid sure was.

burning metal in a cup of acid. and no eye protection.

I am surprised to see this happening in the USA, I thought that UK had the title sewn up for "Unbelievably Stupid Jobsworths"

It is metastazing in the whole world. The whole overprotection thing. Our parents assumed that we were both smart and reckless. And parented accordingly. The current generation is brought up as if they are retards. The child safety is blown out of proportion ... in a friends house every edge was child proofed ...

Part of the problem is that people these days have fewer children, closer together. Before, say, 1970, people learned parenting because there were lots of both much younger siblings and large families with lots of uncles/cousins living close by.

Now families are small and geographically spread out, so people don't have lots of exposure to younger children. This means they don't get as much practical experience at dealing with kids, which makes them do stupid things, listen to stupid advice, or fall into groupthink.

My old chemistry teacher once welded the school doors together after he learned about thermite. His punishment was to repair the door and write an essay about the possible dangers handling thermite plus a few days helping the janitor clean the school grounds. He reminded us that while we might be tempted to repeat this he would recommend against destroying school property. So we locked the the school by attaching tie down straps to the school doors and leaving through a window in the second story.

In my freshman Chemistry lab, this, uh, underperforming student decided to put a beaker of some extremely volatile solvent (carbon tet, acetone, toluene?) on a lit bunsen burner, shooting flames about 12 feet high, damaging the facility pretty badly, and putting a stop to his medical school aspirations.

That was one of the first events in my life where I realized i needed to suspend morbid fascination, and develop a fear of getting killed.

During my A levels, I had a friend who somehow managed to set the entire fume cabinet on fire, and in panic, he accidentally unlodged the tap controlling the bunsen burner, causing fire to come out of the tap as well.

He's now a lawyer.

Ahhh ... lets say I painted the floor with nitrogen triiodide in front of the teachers toilet when the philosophy teacher was taking a dump there. She jumped and screamed maybe a minute and on every jump she landed on a nice patch of substance and small new explosion and scream and so on ... It was fun being in eight grade.

At MIT we did some fun things:

1) Dropping whole blocks of sodium metal (5-10 pounds) into the Charles River, off a bridge. This is an annual thing, although I think it may have stopped at some point.

2) Taking non-dairy coffee creamer (a very fine powder) into a 5-story fireproof stairwell in a dorm, dropping the powder so it filled the air in the stairwell, and then demonstrating fuel air explosive

3) Soaking a tennis ball in gasoline, lighting it on fire, and playing soccer in a relatively fireproof hallway. Hilarity ensued when an RA decided to try to put out some minor secondary fire using a ... synthetic nylon sleeping bag as a fire blanket.

Outside college but not in a warzone, I did a lot more interesting stuff. Tannerite, LPG cylinders, etc.

In Iraq, I got to play with much more fun stuff, sometimes under competent supervision. I still have never gotten to fire an RPG or set off a claymore, though.

When I was there, the coffeemate explosion was typically done in the EC courtyard right after the sodium drop. I think there might have been a hiatus on the sodium drop after someone found some unexploded on the bank near mass ave in 07 and it caused a fire when they chucked it in with some other wet debris.Not sure if it actually did stop or come back. Sad if it's gone, that was always one of my favorite events of the year.

Charges dropped: https://www.change.org/petitions/state-attorney-jerry-hill-d...

That link only says the charges haven't yet been filed, and advocates that they be dropped.

YouTube of a similar experiment - "The Works" cleaner with HCl + aluminum foil

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgDhizxCeIY&feature=youtu...

The same DA didn't press charges against a kid who shot his brother dead with a BB gun. Not saying there should have been charges in that case, just highlights the absurdity of felony charges for a soda bottle bomb.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57582808-71/expelled-girls...

I was suspended for 3 days in high school for burning a small strip of magnesium in the school. I did it exactly the way we did in my chemistry class. Personally, I think it was not dangerous. I was in a room without any wooden furniture, and with a concrete floor.

Earlier that year someone had intentionally (according to investigators) started a fire in a stairwell that was being used to store chairs and desks, so the subject of fire in the school was a bit touchy. The incident also led to the installation of surveillance cameras throughout the school.

As a social mechanism, I think this is a great idea. This is vetted members of the scientific community (as well as just about anyone) speaking their support and hopefully lending to the thought that punishing this girl is unfair.

This is a pretty awesome use of twitter. Hashtags allow a common chain of discussion, and the low-barrier-to-contribution encourages anyone and everyone to weigh in their support.

A lot of the comments here are "I did this similar thing when I was in school too". If you want to contribute, tweet as well with the hashtag.

One of my friends did the same thing in high school, except he put too much in the bottle. When he out the cap on, it instantly exploded. He had severe burns on his face, and if he wasn't wearing glasses, he might have ended up blind.

While I don't think Kiera should be charged with a felony, the encouragement to experiment needs to be tempered with an understanding of risks and proper safety procedures.

I wonder though if a 16-year old high school student who descends from the Middle East, Muslim would get the same public support. Uhm...

They would from me.

Me too.

>I wonder though if a 16-year old high school student who descends from the Middle East, Muslim would get the same public support.

What about an actual terrorist from the middle east, muslim, but wasn't trying to make a bomb this time and was only experimenting? Do you think they would get the same public support?

I like the way you act like you are adding something to the conversation, but you really aren't. That isn't the situation, so let's deal with it when it happens, rather than trying to take away this girl's support.

Here is my contribution to the curious confessions:

Before I built my own computer, I was obviously in to electronics, preceded by electrics. My crimes are ones of electrocution. Both me and innocents. Every one was relieved when I moved from electrical stuff to electronics, then micro electronics. The all clear came when I got my first proper computer and focused on that instead.

Me and several of my friends blew up a menagerie of large objects for the sheer joy of seeing an explosion, and the challenge of making an even bigger explosion the next time. Now we're all engineers, grad students, teachers, etc... I guess we're lucky we were in high school before the country went insane with fear.

At this rate when a student opens a Coke or Pepsi in school it will be considered an explosive device.

This story has been haunting me for a week.

So far the only news I've seen cover it on a national basis on TV is Chris Hayes - anyone else?

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/all-in-/51740447

In high school I got suspended for 2 days for creating a "broadcast storm" by plugging an ethernet wall outlet to itself. The school was without computer network for days. No felony charges.

I knew a guy who got a perfect standardized test score, went to a pretty nice, selective college, and then got in some trouble there for making napalm. Not like felony trouble, but trouble.

I put a capacitor in backwards once, went away from my circuit, and came back to smell and see it smoking and flaming.

When 12, I tried electrolysis of hydrochloric acid for hydrogen, but nearly poisoned me and my friend with chlorine.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal... shoot a homemade cannon at the age of eleven.

Safety is important during science experiments but accidents happen.

reminds me of when i accidentally started a fire in study hall ...

I wish the race card wouldn't be played as much in all of this, and that it's a conversation about schooling, science, and the risks that we should be willing to accept in a free country.

I agree. But maybe race is a part of it. Would there be felony charges if she was a white girl from the rich burbs?

"Maybe"? Bringing race into a discussion makes everything worse. Don't do it unless you have very good evidence. There's enough injustice here already to talk about.

I grew up in and around Bartow. I think there is very good reason to suspect that this may be race related.

>Would there be felony charges if she was a white girl from the rich burbs?

It's a legitimate question but I don't know if the answer is that clear. For something like this to happen you need two things:

1) Rules that are too harsh and too broad, that classify blowing a small hole in the ground by mixing household cleaners just to see what would happen as the same offense as an act of terrorism.

2) "Zero tolerance" law-and-order bureaucrats who don't care that they're ruining the lives of bright young people by charging them with crimes they may technically have committed but fall outside the legislative intent or any sense of proportionality.

"Would this happen if she was a rich white girl" is a question of (2). It's plausible that some bureaucrats are racist or are more inclined to prosecute someone expected to have fewer resources to mount a defense, or that the bureaucrats in poor neighborhoods are more likely to draw a hard line. But the way to prevent things like this from happening is really to fix (1). As long as you have rules on the books that make what happened here into a serious offense, you're providing cover for overzealous prosecutors to defend themselves under "just following orders" type rationales that appeal to the letter of the law, and paint the supposed wrong not as being that this girl was charged but that the rich white girl wouldn't be.

The problem here is that the rules allow them to do this to anyone. The rules need to change.

Except that there are numerous cases of white kids doing similar things and not, you know, having their lives ruined by felony charges.

I am inclined to think that the school would have had the same reaction regardless of the student's race. It sounds like a classic case of, "How dare she learn things we did not sanction in our curriculum?! She needs to be punished!"

That would be a comforting fiction. However it seems that this prosecutor might have a pattern of behavior consistent with taking race into account:

http://raniakhalek.com/2013/05/02/prosecutor-behind-kiera-wi...

While the component you're talking about is real, I'm sure, I suspect that the part of it where a young girl curious about science has her life ruined is probably at least as motivated by race as by control issues in the school.

That link you gave could equally well be used to support the argument that the prosecutor is prejudiced AGAINST white people. Set off a minor explosion at a school where it will put black people at a slight risk, he prosecutes. Kill a white kid, he does not prosecute.

Maybe, if America doesn't have a history of white-oppresses-black racism stretching back to before its founding as a country. Since it does, I do not thing any rational reader could com to that conclusion.

In either case, it doesn't matter. The point is the prosecutor really seems to be taking race into account on juvenile cases. Were they favoring black kids or unduly penalizing them is immaterial.

A rational reader could not come to any conclusion from the link you provided, because the two cases considered there are so different, and even if they were similar the sample size is way too small.

It is not small at all in the context of American history. It was really not so long ago that we were requiring black people to use separate water fountains from white people and blocking them from whole classes of employment. Many places in that region of the US still cling–perhaps unwittingly, I suppose–to extremely racist traditions like segregated public and private events. The statistics on black incarceration and economic status are well established.

So when someone raises the specter of racism in a powerful public office like this, the accusation warrants investigation if nothing else. And other people here have asked for hundreds of samples, but this prosecutor's data set (which is really the thing in question here) is really not that large.

What's more, it loses sight of the real problem! The real problem is a curious girl is being overly punished for experimenting. The laws that put her in this jeopardy should also be under attack in addition to investigating the racist factors that come to light.

Yes. And the War on Drugs can be seen just as easily as evidence that the government is racially biased against white people, because it decides to protect blacks from the decimation of drugs in their own community while letting white teenagers smoking pot run wild in their own.

The problem with that story is that the prosecutor advised the charges by telephone.

It is much more likely that she, the police officer and the principal got all worked up over "OMG BOMB" than that the police officer decided that mentioning the race of the girl on the phone was relevant.

I do not think two datapoints can really support any conclusions here. Are there other cases to point to?

http://hiphopandpolitics.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/the-case-a...

P.S., How many young black children's lives being unfairly altered is "a significant dataset" for you to answer the question, "Is a white prosecutor in sub-urban Florida _really_ racist?" I'd like to know the actual number.

The article you linked to only has two cases for this specific prosecutor. I have little doubt that there are racist cops and racist prosecutors in this country, but for this specific prosecutor I am not seeing good evidence of a racist motivation.

On the other hand, I see quite a bit of prejudice in your comment -- you seem fixated on the fact that the prosecutor is white and works in suburban Florida.

Actually, those are relavant data points. Assuming you can get racism rates for the population "white people in suburban florida", you can set a base probability of the specific person from that population being racist. This would affect the sample sizes of data needed to determine if that person was racist.

Except that not all those datapoints were from suburbs, let alone suburban Florida, and there were still only a handful of them. The sample is also biased, as it excludes white people receiving harsh treatment (it happens).

I do not personally doubt that black Americans are mistreated; I watched black friends of mine being mistreated when I was a teenager. However, I have yet to see any evidence of racism in this case.

2 kids in the same district. One is playing around while illegally handling firearms. One is playing around while legally working on a science project at school where they're supposed to be supervised.

One child kills another. The other produces a small puff of smoke. Same prosecutor, same area. One case, she deliberates for a month. The other case, she gives a phone recommendation over 3 days.

I'm sorry, but given the history of the US this seems like relevant and damning data.

Again, I ask: how many children's lives need to be ruined before you have a statistically significant number? Please set the goalpost.

It is entirely possible that the two cases you cite are outliers. It is also likely that you cherry-picked those two cases because they support your point of view.

How about this: take a random sample of at least 100 felony cases in which the defendant was a minor prosecuted by that office. If you can find that in that sample, black people were more likely to be prosecuted aggressively than white people, you would have at least taken the first step in demonstrating ongoing racism.

Actually I'd prefer to have you lay out exactly what it'd take to convince you in a post I can link to. That way if I do find the data, I can point to this post when you shift your goalposts.

Take a sample of 100 random felony cases against black defendants and 100 random felony cases against white defendants prosecuted by this specific prosecutor during a specific period of time and where the defendants were from similar economic backgrounds. Then show that all things being equal, black defendants were prosecuted more aggressively than white defendants.

In other words, approach this as if you were a scientist and take the emotion and assumptions out of it.

> In other words, approach this as if you were a scientist and take the emotion and assumptions out of it.

It's almost like someone has put together a huge body of data that you cheerfully ignore.

http://sentencingproject.org/template/index.cfm

In the future, I am not your research department. This is a trivial google search for a site that compiles a huge body of data you want. Racism is alive and well in the justice system.

Which is all way off topic from the more important question: why is this curious young girl's life being ruined.

P.S., you are, in my book, not a good person. Just thought you should know. Mostly because of your willful ignorance.

The scary thing is that the assistant AG is trying to charge her as an adult, with a felony charge. The race part comes in when the AG has chosen not to charge a white teenager who accidentally killed someone with a gun not so long ago. Both were accidnets, just that one resulted in someone dying by illegally handling a firearm and the other was a student experimenting at school with a science project. I think what a lot of black people are thinking is what if the roles were reversed and she accidentally killed someone with a firearm?

I agree that we should try and keep this not focused on race but most people are thinking about it and it is rational to assume that it may play a part. I am amazed how much injustice passes by the public eye in the US and everyone just moves on, I blame the press for a huge part of this as they just look for the next fresh headline. A good example is right now, they are milking the Boston bombings for all they can, it is no longer about the victims, its tuned into a soap opera where we need to know what this guy ate everyday, that he liked playing FIFA wtf,when simple gun laws cannot be passed. The Newtown school shooting is not worth their time anymore. A recent injustice not reported on is the two old Latina lady's (one was 71yrs) who the cops opened fired on when they thought it was Chris dorner's truck even though it was a totally different make. The total paid to them was $40 000 for a new truck and that's it. Both these woman were struck by bullets from cops just spraying them with bullets, its amazing. Sorry for going off a tangent but this irritates me.

EDIT: It has been brought to my attention below that as of April 23rd, the LAPD will pay them a $4.2 million settlement. I am still concerned about having cops that can open fire on US citizens without warning, which amounts to an attack to kill.

>>The total paid to them was $40 000 for a new truck and that's it. Both these woman were struck by bullets from cops just spraying them with bullets, its amazing. Sorry for going off a tangent but this irritates me.<<

According to this article[1] they are getting a 4.2million dollar settlement. I think it is fair.

[1]http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/04/just-in-latina-...

Thanks, I have updated my comment!

And she is the first black kid to do this? Sample size is too small.

It is probably not too small given the prosecutors behavior.

Still, you can't say, "The sample size is too small" in this case. The trials are ruined human lives. It requires we be more proactive. Sometimes we will overcompensate, that's the nature of the beast, but we cannot accumulate a statistically significant number of ruined lives to make decisions because most people only get one and if you take that in the name of answering the question, "Is a prosecutor in sub-urban Florida REEEEALLLLYY Racist?" it's probably not going to go well.

This case doesn't exist in a vacuum. Google around; black kids are in general handled much more roughly by the police and prosecutors.

Schooling, science, and the risk we should be willing to accept in a free society are directly tied to race.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School-to-prison_pipeline

http://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/school-prison-pipeline

The reason race is being brought up is that black people are underrepresented among scientists, and that this student clearly demonstrated the sort of curiosity that drives great scientists. Punishing her for that would be counterproductive regardless of her skin color; it is made even worse by the fact that we generally want to encourage black people to become scientists.

Well, it's interesting to note that Tammy Glotfelty, the prosecutor who decided to giver her two felony charges, but decided not to charge another (white) teenager who shot and killed his younger brother with a BB Gun the week before: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/02/1206443/-Would-a-Wh...

Now obviously, the Daily Kos has its own slant so take this with a grain of salt. But certainly seems like the two cases have radically differing reactions from one another.

I live in this area. Bartow is phosphate mining and oranges. Culturally diverse it isn't. Her race is most likely relevant. There's a reason Florida is known for weirdness and general idiocy.

I'd be inclined to agree, except that the same prosecutor just decided that there should be no charges where a white boy shot and killed his brother. The boys were pointing BB guns at each other, and didn't think they were loaded.

I live right next to Bartow, and I have family who does live in Bartow. There is a very good chance that this is race-related.

What a horrible title. Had to read it few times before I decided I don't understand it. Why are some word capitalized and some not blows my mind. I won't even bother reading the article.

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