Chemistry Under Attack
There's a fascinating (and kind of frightening) article in the latest issue of Wired magazine called Don't Try This At Home. One topic it covers is the trend of vendors who sell chemicals to amateur scientists being prosecuted by the government. The rationale?
The materials used in some home chemistry experiments and demonstrations can be used to make crystal meth or illegal fireworks. Seriously. In one case, the owner of a chemical supply company was arrested at gunpoint by a team of federal agents because he sold chemicals that could be used as the precursors for an M-80. His company is in danger of going out of business; if that happens, it will further deprive both established and budding scientists of the materials they need to experiment and create.
As you might expect, this has the potential to further dampen interest in the sciences (especially chemistry) in the US, where science education is already sorely lacking.
This should be worrisome not just to people like me who do chemistry demonstrations and experiments for a living, but for anyone who values a complete education for American students. In previous centuries, science was almost exclusively the domain of amateurs. Tinkerers and experimentalists made vital discoveries just as often as trained chemists. More recently, decades ago every geeky kid had a chemistry set and got to do their own experiments at home. Now, however, our society has developed the conciet that you have to be an expert to work with chemicals; chemistry sets were out of vogue by the time I was old enough for one. Too dangerous to sell on the shelves, at least not with anything interesting inside. Want to mix some sulfuric acid and nitric acid with cellulose to make guncotton? How about trying your own simple organic synthesis in your garage? Too bad, my friend. It's simply not acceptable for amateurs to try these things anymore, even in the classroom:
Ha! I wonder how many school district policies I violate every time I do an in-class demonstration? I let kids fire off guncotton, break shit with liquid nitrogen, perform exothermic oxidations, handle and pour weak acids and bases, and other things that are scary sounding but perfectly safe. The students love it, and it's way more interesting for the whole class if one of their peers is blowing something up rather than if they're just sitting there watching me do it.
That's the main concern I have, right there. If a kid doesn't get to personally initiate a chemical reaction, they just don't get the same sense of wonder. Watching somebody perform an activity is never as captivating as getting to do the same thing yourself. And it's not going to stimulate a desire to learn chemistry, or biology, or physics, or whatever. We don't need a nation of students who are adept at watching; they already get six plus hours of practice at that from their couches at home every night. Our students need experience at doing, dammit. I'm not optimistic about the future of chemistry in this country if this trend continues.
Anyway, go read the whole article. There's lots in there that I wanted to talk about, but in the interest of not making this a 20,000 word post I left it out. That's what the comments are for!
Tags: chemistry, at-home experiments, creeping fascism, science education
The materials used in some home chemistry experiments and demonstrations can be used to make crystal meth or illegal fireworks. Seriously. In one case, the owner of a chemical supply company was arrested at gunpoint by a team of federal agents because he sold chemicals that could be used as the precursors for an M-80. His company is in danger of going out of business; if that happens, it will further deprive both established and budding scientists of the materials they need to experiment and create.
As you might expect, this has the potential to further dampen interest in the sciences (especially chemistry) in the US, where science education is already sorely lacking.
Popular Science columnist Theodore Gray, who is one of United Nuclear’s regular customers, uses potassium perchlorate to demonstrate the abundance of energy stored in sugar and fat. He chops up Snickers bars, sprinkles in the snowy crystals, and ignites the mixture, which bursts into a tower of flame – the same rapid exothermic reaction that propels model rockets skyward. "Why is it that I can walk into Wal-Mart and buy boxes of bullets and black powder, but I can’t buy potassium perchlorate to do science because it can also be used to make explosives?" he asks. "How many people are injured each year doing extreme sports or playing high school football? But mention mixing up chemicals in your home lab, and people have a much lower index of acceptable risk."
[...]
"To criminalize the necessary materials of discovery is one of the worst things you can do in a free society," says Shawn Carlson, a 1999 MacArthur fellow and founder of the Society for Amateur Scientists. "The Mr. Coffee machine that every Texas legislator has near his desk has three violations of the law built into it: a filter funnel, a Pyrex beaker, and a heating element. The laws against meth should be the deterrent to making it – not criminalizing activities that train young people to appreciate science."
The increasingly strict regulatory climate has driven a wedge of paranoia between young chemists and their potential mentors. "I don’t tell anyone about what I do at home," writes one anonymous high schooler on Sciencemadness.org, an online forum for amateur scientists. "A lot of ignorant people at my school will just spread rumors about me...The teacher will hear about them and I will get into legal trouble...I have so much glassware at my house, any excuse will not cut it. So I keep my mouth shut."
This should be worrisome not just to people like me who do chemistry demonstrations and experiments for a living, but for anyone who values a complete education for American students. In previous centuries, science was almost exclusively the domain of amateurs. Tinkerers and experimentalists made vital discoveries just as often as trained chemists. More recently, decades ago every geeky kid had a chemistry set and got to do their own experiments at home. Now, however, our society has developed the conciet that you have to be an expert to work with chemicals; chemistry sets were out of vogue by the time I was old enough for one. Too dangerous to sell on the shelves, at least not with anything interesting inside. Want to mix some sulfuric acid and nitric acid with cellulose to make guncotton? How about trying your own simple organic synthesis in your garage? Too bad, my friend. It's simply not acceptable for amateurs to try these things anymore, even in the classroom:
The chemophobia that’s put a damper on home science has also invaded America’s classrooms, where hands-on labs are being replaced by liability-proof teacher demonstrations with the explicit message Don’t try this at home. A guide for teachers of grades 7 through 12 issued by the American Chemical Society in 2001 makes the prospect of an hour in the lab seem fraught with peril: "Every chemical, without exception, is hazardous. Did you know that oxygen is poisonous if inhaled at a concentration a bit greater than its natural concentration in the air?" More than half of the suggested experiments in a multimedia package for schools called "You Be the Chemist," created in 2004 by the Chemical Educational Foundation, are to be performed by the teacher alone, leaving students to blow up balloons (with safety goggles in place) or answer questions like "How many pretzels can you eat in a minute?"
Ha! I wonder how many school district policies I violate every time I do an in-class demonstration? I let kids fire off guncotton, break shit with liquid nitrogen, perform exothermic oxidations, handle and pour weak acids and bases, and other things that are scary sounding but perfectly safe. The students love it, and it's way more interesting for the whole class if one of their peers is blowing something up rather than if they're just sitting there watching me do it.
That's the main concern I have, right there. If a kid doesn't get to personally initiate a chemical reaction, they just don't get the same sense of wonder. Watching somebody perform an activity is never as captivating as getting to do the same thing yourself. And it's not going to stimulate a desire to learn chemistry, or biology, or physics, or whatever. We don't need a nation of students who are adept at watching; they already get six plus hours of practice at that from their couches at home every night. Our students need experience at doing, dammit. I'm not optimistic about the future of chemistry in this country if this trend continues.
Anyway, go read the whole article. There's lots in there that I wanted to talk about, but in the interest of not making this a 20,000 word post I left it out. That's what the comments are for!
Tags: chemistry, at-home experiments, creeping fascism, science education
posted by The Disgruntled Chemist at
9:40 AM
Links to this post:
Create a Link
links to this post << Home