I asked my math camp kids what kind of experiments they did in in science class:
“none”
“we watch videos”
“we dissected a frog… on the computer”
“we were going to do lasers but there were no batteries”
@futurebird As a curious 8 year old I conducted my own clandestine experiment I named "Does It Burn?". I watched my mom use an aluminum pie tin in the oven, so I used that as my holder. I created a list of things to test: Dirt, rocks, kleenex, newspaper, glass, brown paper bag, stainless steel, aluminum, cast iron. Each with a hypothesis. I used my Dad's matches and tested, and safely guessed each outcome until aluminum. There I learned an aluminum sheet does not burn if held horizontally, but if turned vertically, bursts into big flames like paper scaring the heck out of an unprepared 8 year old. Frightened, I dropped it into the pie tin. Which I realized was also ALUMINUM!!! Even more frightened I dropped the flaming sheet and pie tin into the trash can lined with a brown paper bag. Oh NO! Brown paper bags burn! I was so frightened I blew it all out with one adrenaline infused breath, then dumped the whole thing into the stainless steel kitchen sink and turned on the water. I stopped my experiments on that day. Science is very exciting. I became a poet.
@pattykimura@futurebird
I tried to build a laser out of legos, tin foil and a bicycle headlight. I was worried what would happen if it turned out to be so powerful as to burn through the walls, but I had to know.
Fortunately the prototype turned out not to yield the uncontrollably high power output that I feared, so all is well. But it might have been a close call.
Since metal can oxidize it can burn. Really most metals (all? I'm not a chemist... help) will burn if you just cut them up so there is enough surface area for the level of ambient O2 to keep the burning reaction self sustaining.
Maybe I should really learn the chemistry a little after all these years.
@futurebird@pattykimura i suppose that makes sense regarding the "held vertically" part -- exposing it to as much of the flame as possible as opposed to holding it horizontally and concentrating the flame on a smaller point.
@futurebird@trenchworms@pattykimura My dad would throw zinc pieces in the fireplace, and they'd burn up. Think there was some idea it would help with deposits in the chimney. We had a lot of old zinc drain pipes from renovating my grandma's house next door.
as a kid i was well aware that iron + alu oxide and magnesium ribbons would burn like crazy, but i guess i've never really considered alufoil going up in flames (even if it makes total sense after thinking about it)
@futurebird@veronica@trenchworms@pattykimura
And Aluminium in particular is freakishly reactive. Thermite is made of it, and it is used to melt train rails.
You never see pure aluminium, only aluminium oxyde. The reason why it does not rust is that the oxyde protects the inside.
@futurebird@trenchworms@pattykimura No, it was circulated in the 50s that burning zinc would help against soot buildup. They even suggested burning zinc batteries. I've never checked whether it actually works or not.
@trenchworms@futurebird@pattykimura Coming from a mining town, there was a fair bit of old dynamite around, and incidents of people doing stuff they shouldn't with it when I grew up. Like blowing up abandoned cars in one of the abandoned mining sites. 😄
@futurebird@trenchworms The greatest lesson I learned was of the potentially dangerous hubris of my own (certain) assumptions. I was a humbled 8 year old and now try to keep that lesson learned decades later. We learn great things from our mistakes if we learn from our mistakes. Also, side benefit: my parents had no idea I almost burned down the house. Yikes.
I get chemistry at the "this is what a reaction is" level, and understand the basic terms. But the chemical formulas and calculating with mole and stuff? My brain never really clicked with that.
I was so bad at experimental quantitative chemistry that working out the molar quantities in order to predict what the observations should have been to give the expected answer, was often the only way to make the experiment "work" correctly.
I think we should encourage kids to do experiments, I was a bit older when I got a chemistry set, lots of fun, still have various notes about what happens when chem x is mixed with chem y.
I want to do this more, the stem group I run is meant to have a practical science element to it, but I am stuck doing computing a lot of the time.
Hopefully that will change as I have lots of nice sciency stuff I want to do and help visitors to do too.
@futurebird my favorite science class memory was in 9th grade... the teacher decided to show us an experiment where he held a container of Hydrocholoric Acid and he dropped a huge chunk of potassium into it...
The flames hit the ceiling after burning his eyebrows on the way up. It was truly inspirational, and we learned that day why he normally taught basic algebra instead.
I will never forget what "exothermic" means, however.
@RenewedRebecca@futurebird I'll never forget my high school chemistry teacher's syringe safety lecture where he accidentally stabbed himself with the syringe he was warning us about.
@xorn@RenewedRebecca@futurebird We were in Summer Camp when the head counselor (also a high school principal) was talking about crabs and brought a live Chesapeake Bay blue crab in. She tried to put this thing back in the barrel and, it fought back for 10 minutes claws up. Kids were laughing and she kept yelling that it was not funny.
@futurebird Generations of school cuts have effectively eliminated science labs. My kids have never had a textbook and nearly the only experiment they've done involved baking soda and vinegar. Science class is conducted in a lab but there is no lab equipment. This is in a well regarded public school system, god knows what a poor one is like today. #tdsb#Toronto#Ontario
@futurebird
that was how my science classes were - practically all the labs got canceled. Except, we didn't usually do any computer labs either, with maybe one or two exceptions. College was a bit different; it was only the chemistry labs that got cancelled. : (
@llewelly@futurebird
Experimental A-level chemistry for me seemed to be endless titrations - has the indicator changed colour? Drip. Has the indicator changed colour? Drip. And so on...
(Livened up a bit by the teacher regularly taking out his glass eye and cleaning it under the sink at the front of the class. He never let on how he lost his eye - we didn't think it was a chemistry-related incident...)
@coprolite9000@llewelly@futurebird given the dullness of both A-level physics and chemistry, it's no wonder I did a maths degree and wish I'd taken English rather than Chemistry. We had a bloody awful physics teacher, and most of what I learned in that class came from reading the text book, but damn it was still fascinating.
@pdcawley@coprolite9000@llewelly@futurebird
I got into arguments with my physics teachers who believed not just long debunked myths (e.g. glass is just a very viscous liquid, medieval windows thicker at the bottom, etc), but got basic hydraulics and mechanics of accelerated frames incorrect. One insisted you had to lean left when riding a bicycle that was turning right, so that your CG was always directly above the point where wheels touched the road.🤦♂️
@coprolite9000@llewelly@futurebird I had a great old inorganic chemistry textbook that I inherited from my dad that was full of asides like "NCl₃ was first synthesised by Dr _, who lost 2 fingers and an eye"
@KevinMarks@coprolite9000@llewelly@futurebird “For this lesson, we’re talking about God’s perfect solvent, toluene. Let us all take a minute of silence for the fact that we can no longer mouth-pipette this glorious chemical because it is just insanely carcinogenic. Dissolve anything you like though.”
@Apiary@KevinMarks@coprolite9000@llewelly@futurebird yeah, the tenures profs had much better stories than the associate profs.
Assoc. prof: I double-checked the numbers and saved my employer a couple million dollars/year by proving they can shut down a bank of heaters on one of their bioreactors. I got a thank you card.
@c0dec0dec0de@KevinMarks@coprolite9000@llewelly@futurebird
When I started working as a lab tech 20+ years back, the safety documentation used to caution against mouth pipetting. Never having heard of this technique, I asked one of the guys maybe a decade older. He was like, "Oh yah. You just suck it into the thing with your mouth. Sometimes if you pull HCl too far it stings a little." 😬
@coprolite9000@llewelly@futurebird
I think in retrospect I kind of appreciate that about them? A tiny taste of the craft of doing measurements well and efficiently
@futurebird@coprolite9000@llewelly 6th grade absolutely yes! (I was thinking high-schoolish with the titrations, which is also where it might be good to give students some info about how science can be much more craft-like than there is time for in a high school class)
@kdund@futurebird@llewelly
This was age 16-18 - I just can't remember what the titrations etc. were all for.
Compare a few years later at university, I was tasked with measuring the gravitational constant. (Not 'g' - big G! A version of the Cavendish experiment, with lead spheres and a torsion pendulum.)
Loads of dull measurements, but to figure out a fundamental constant of the universe! My result was imprecise, but accurate - teaching me about the importance of expressing uncertainty...
I was explaining how in math and CS we don’t often work “experimentally” we work by building systems that work then duplicating and reusing those systems— IDK if it made sense because they didn’t know what I meant by experimentation— 😩
@futurebird
Very sad, and I hope the schools don't use funding as an excuse. I once taught at a school overseas (not "poor," but the board was miserly with funding). I taught experimental procedures with a handful of beans from the market and other cheap materials.
It's terrible that STEM education is suffering when it's more important than ever. But it's great to hear that math camps are still a thing.
@futurebird@sollat Gosh no, in so many schools we never had a coherent set of equipment & anyway instead of maintaining the supplies the districts are required to buy whole new sets every time a new curriculum is adopted, and then they can't afford to get whole sets so key bits are missing from the get
@futurebird
We made fire extinguishers (aged 11) with nested test tubes. We trialled them on paper towels burnt in metal bowls. One of the children set a desk on fire.
@futurebird
I can't count all the chemistry sets and microscopes my brother and I collected as little kids. A friend was telling me they're almost impossible to buy for kids now. Very worrisome.
@futurebird, I was the kid who was always setting magnesium and sodium on fire in the sink, and making stink bombs from HCL and calcium.
I turned out ok.
Didn’t I?
@futurebird While I wholeheartedly support changing dissection of animals to a virtual thing if it must be done, I really really really have to ask: why is a math camp dissecting frogs at all?
@futurebird Back in my day, Mr. Marcoux used two dining hall forks and a stripped extension cord to turn a dill pickle into a sodium light in physics class.
@futurebird that's a real shame because I don't think there was more than a two week period, and mostly weekly, that didn't do some sort of lab experiment for the 7 years I was in middle and highschool. Outside vacations of course.
@futurebird Playing devil's advocate: We did a fair number of experiments in school, and they were all rubbish until university. All I remember is thinking they were pointless and boring and taught me nothing, and I say this as someone who had a brief career as an experimental scientist (before following CS's siren song, where I still do "experiments" but from the safety of a chair rather than a lab bench).
@futurebird Have to admit I lost interest in chemistry class when I realized they weren't going to teach me how to write an equation that would predict what color a chemical combination would produce.
But I always loved the "mix things together" part of it!
I can see how a field biologist would have trouble understanding the issue, but we were like 13? Not field biologists.
Educationally, it was pretty underwhelming too. A field biologist would have screamed at how many body parts went entirely unexamined, unnamed and wasted.
And it was so rare that nobody developed any skills relevant to it, either.
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