@navlasop that's part of the problem.

For example, there is no doubt that pharmaceutical companies engage in some EXTREMELY shady shit. But when someone screams that vaccines are evil and "big pharma" is hiding the cure for cancer, it becomes difficult to discern the genuine issues (evergreening, etc) from the noise.

"Chem trails!
Global Warming!
9/11 was an inside job!
Aliens at Roswell!"

One of those is a real and serious problem, but if it gets lumped in with the orders, it becomes easy to dismiss it as nonsense.

We need to get better as a society at filtering the signal from the noise.

My Organic Chem 101 lecturer told me that no experiment ever fails if you can:

a) explain why it didn't work
or
b) you can use the results somewhere else

The abiding lesson was always to be vigilant during experiments just in case something was waiting to be discovered.

Kudos to them!

I actually made a cyanotype print in high school chem class (a long time ago!). The process is that you make the solution, paint it on the paper, let it dry in the dark, put the object or negative on top, expose to sunlight (or UV light), and then rinse it in water to fix the print.

I also found this set of instructions which confirmed what I remembered

http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/processes/cyanotype/cyanotype-classic-process

Burning coal releases more radioactive material in the environment than nuclear power. [1] [2]

Yeah, not saying it has no value at all, but if we handled scalpels as a doc like we did in high school... /shudder X D

And definitely, there are some cool things to learn out there, or even just things (like a lot of history) that gives us context or just informs us of the big things that we missed. I like learning stuff just for the sake of knowing it as well (and promptly forgetting it, what are ya gonna do ; ).

I'm glad I've convinced my son of the value of "experiments", basic chem and physics that do cool things and have ignited his curiousity at 5 years old.

If you did high school bio, think about what you covered that has any sort of influence on medicine... =)

Frog or rat dissection? Covered that in Bio 101 in the first year of my Applied Chemistry degree (and yes, you can give a rat a Columbian necktie... . Photosynthesis? Mating?

Yeah, Bio was pretty much introducing you to broad concepts and it's nothing that doesn't get rehashed in the first 6 months of Uni via intro subjects. I think of it more as a way to dip the toe in the pool and see if the subject matter excites you enough to try and turn it in to a career.

eg. At 40 now (and having forgotten my chem degree and gone in to IT as a sys admin after working as a chef, bouncer etc), I could go back to uni barely remembering anything about chemistry and start from scratch and be none the worse for it. The keystones you talk about are literacy and numeracy, that's about it. And they are learned in primary school.

Oh sure, it helps if you can do some higher math, but English lit? Physics? Drama? Almost nothing you do at high school has any real defining affect on most of what you do as an adult. It's more like a sampler platter, and of course a way of grading students (on a curve of course, we can't have people's scores based on their own merit) to distinguish what tertiary studies they should be eligible for.

School should be about igniting curiousity as much as practical skills for life. I did "Home Economics" (ie. cooking/sewing/budgets etc) and typing (on real mechanical typewriters no less) as opposed to wood/metal shop ( I was awful at shop). My home ec teacher was always interested in making different food, so we tried some pretty out there things in grade 8 (~13 years old), and I've always been interested in cooking since. Similarly, learning to touch type has made my life radically simpler, particularly in IT (try writing a 40 page instruction manual hunting and pecking).

Most of the high school grads we see as cadets or trainees are essentially useless and have to be taught from scratch anyway. Most of the codified BS we have these days doesn't prepare kids for life, doesn't encourage critical thinking or creativity, it a self justification to keep schools open.

I don't think I want to be the one to test that theory, I'd be worried about what would happen after the initial phase... it is quite true though that the two gases need to be in a certain range of ratios to explode. Since earth has a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere we normally talk about the gas concentration in air, but in the reverse situation you also need a certain percentage of oxygen like your chem teacher said.

There has been talk of coal mining in an oxygen free environment, with the workers wearing space suits, see this Deseret News article from 1970 for instance - http://goo.gl/PEZKp8

I didn't find any evidence that the idea got past feasibility testing.

You're kidding, right? You do realise even in Ireland that accent is considered to be somewhere between herpes and being crushed by a falling piano on the list of bad shit that can happen to you?

Best review I've read of them.

The world was doing just fine. I mean there was that global recession thing that just won't go away - doesn't matter how much new money you print up to throw at it! And there have been a series of earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and storms around the world, seemingly more devastating as global warming is either the culprit or just some wishy-washy idea the government would have you believe so that the chem-trails can continue. ...So there were those things.

But the world was still here - at least. So from that point of view things were okay. And then The Cranberries had to blow it and end 11 years of silence (ah, that sweet, sweet silence) and return with more of Delores' vocal strychnine and another round of pedestrian pub-rock prancing.

I actually do support a limited engagement in Syria, supporting neither side but removing (explosively) the chemical weapon stores as well as their delivery systems.

Tactically, the only way to "safely" destroy chem weapon stockpiles is to bunker bust the facilities and follow it up with a massive incendiary strike.

The reason for doing this is complicated but not without purpose. A decisive strike will keep other authoritarian regimes with chem weapons from getting a green light on using them. In my opinion, if we do nothing, or not enough, the next gas attack on citizens will involve 10's of thousands of people and the horror will be palpable.

*promote chem news

My theory: For evolutionary needs, when you've seen something before something happens in your brain to give you the feeling that you've seen it, like a chem release maybe. Deja Vu is when that 'chem release' gets triggered accidentally/independently.

I thought the older chem class videos with the long-gone professor looked like they would be fun to watch.

I just had a horrible O-Chem flashback.

Right, heaven forbid you should need to clean up a spill of this stuff! But I'm sure there is some way to remove it with the right chems.

Oh chem lab how I don't miss you.