Soon to be outlawed in the U.S.
When chemistry is outlawed, only outlaws will do chemistry: In an attempt to curb the production of crystal meth, more than 30 states have now outlawed or require registration for common lab equipment. In Texas, you need to register the purchase of Erlenmeyer flasks or three-necked beakers. The same state where I do not have to register a handgun, forces me to register a glass beaker. When a current company tried re releasing a kit based on the one marketed by Mr. Wizard himself back in the 1950s, they found that they could only include five of the original chemicals in the set. The rest of the items were replaced with inane things like super balls and balloons. Even a non neutered modern chemistry set like the C3000 from Thames and Kosmos is forced to ship without many key chemicals, suggesting to their customers that they acquire the missing ingredients elsewhere.
This is what it is coming down to: you need to break the law to do science. We’re criminalizing nerds.
At least making science dangerous and illicit and illegal ought to make us romantic outlaws look cool.
Well, you have to make it easier to buy a gun, how else would you be able to stop a beaker wielding nerd? I knew that precipitating a solution could be a dangerous operation.
#25….MikeN…..I could live with D.C. not having the vote, and delaying congressional pay raises dosen’t make any difference, since the incumbant return rate is like 95%.
#26…TheGlobalWarmer……Look, I’m not going to apologise anymore for voting for Bush in my very first election….so stop with the no vote until 30 talk. 🙂
I still fondly recall a day in high school chem lab. Kid dropped a container on the floor and white fumes rose in abundance. Teacher walked over and stood next to the puddle and said “What are you going to do?” Kid said nothing.
Teacher walked over to a lab table, and poured the contents onto the puddle stopping the fumes. “What Johnny just demonstrated was the acid reacting to the base in the concrete. Adding more base material will stop that chemical reaction.”
All just as cool as a cucumber. That was a pretty exciting day in school that I guess kids wont get anymore. Maybe exercising with how to put on a condum would come pretty close though.
#29 – Many here will disagree 😉 however I feel I have a clue. I freely admit to being just another yahoo though.
I had a thought this morning – in early printings of Farnham’s Freehold by Heinlein, he described in detail how to make nitroglycerin. Does anyone know if that’s passage has been removed in recent printings?
I had a huge chemistry set when I was 11 years old. I never caused any explosions.
#34- it would not matter, check out Wikipedia.
This is great news.
Rabinow’s Law VIII states that “Things that are done illegally are done most efficiently” So if kids do science illegally then they will do it well.
Rabinow formulated a number of laws on invention possibly the best known is “To promote inventions (or any art form) just love inventions (or the art form).”
If kids are told they cant do science then perhaps we will have better science. Education has failed why not try something else?
This is what happens when uneducated Rednecks make laws. Glass vessels are necessary for EXPERIMENTAL science only: to easily see whats going on in various parts of a reaction. When the reaction is well understood, its not necessary to use glass. The Legal drug industry cooks up their products in Stainless Steel reaction vessels. These ignorant hick lawmakers are insisting that certain “science-ritual glass vessels” are totally necessary to create illegal drugs LMAO. (I am a Canadian medical Lab tech and think I can speak on this issue)
What such laws WILL DO is seriously damage America’s technical-product leadership in world markets. ALL physical materials-processing involves chemistry.