Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Today's accepted 'cool' way of doing 'science'!

chemoleo - 14-6-2006 at 01:55

Watch the vid (quick time needed):
http://www.eepybird.com/dcm1.html

It's the surprising 'reaction' between Mentos and Diet Coke... making bubble geysers!
See http://www.eepybird.com/science1.html for an explanation.
This begs the question of course if it would work with other acidic, highly carbonated drinks...


Can you believe this made it straight onto the Yahoo homepage?

bio2 - 14-6-2006 at 04:08

The article in Wired on amature chemistry
said some highschool chem teachers have
to check (sign) out the vinegar and baking soda from the office.

There is a chemical engineering undergraduate article on the net concerning
the dismantaling and operation of a coffee
maker. This was so highly technical that I'm sure the elementary kids could have done it.

So what will the world come too when all the graduates main experience is watching
videos of experiments.

It's pathetic.

Quantum - 14-6-2006 at 12:44

Such is the nature of the modern world. Knowledge is power and chemical knowledge is very suited to a single person. Some people think this dumbing down of science is because of terrorism and such. I however think it is just a side effect of lawsuits and "hippyish thinking" and has just snowballed down from there.

In "the old days" people in general thought of science as mankinds helper and friend. But after the 50's the opinion shifted and we are still seeing the results of that.

chromium - 14-6-2006 at 13:08

Quote:
Originally posted by Quantum
In "the old days" people in general thought of science as mankinds helper and friend. But after the 50's the opinion shifted and we are still seeing the results of that.


IMO this change occured in sixties, mostly after 1965. Hippyes took so much freedom that most of people were very frightened and started to do what they could to stopp uncontrolled uses of philosophy, religion or science. "Easy Rider" is good allegory of that freedom and of counterreactions which soon won the battle.

[Edited on 14-6-2006 by chromium]

bio2 - 14-6-2006 at 23:14

There is a book "Deliberate Dumbing Down"
forget the auther but listened to her on the Jeff Rense talk radio the other day.

She has a lot of "proof" that this is all deliberate and in high gear since the early
50's.

Apparently high school grads in 1890 were better educated than todays college grads.
It really is sad what is taught in Universities
these days. Is there even such a thing anymore in the State U's as an entrance exam?

They are giving degrees out to semi-literate people for a lot of meaningless course work. I wonder if the bright 6th grader even has a chance to learn anymore in the public schools with
all students mixed together to the lowest common denominator.

chromium - 14-6-2006 at 23:46

With help of Google i found that this book is The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America
by Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt.

There is also official page about this book and everything related at http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/

Full text (pdf) of book is also available for download. Download link is located in frontpage.
Now it is here as well: http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/MomsPDFs/DDDoA.pdf

[Edited on 15-6-2006 by chromium]

lordmagnus - 15-6-2006 at 20:55

Yeah, your not kidding.

The college grads now are really wortheless, I am surprised they get employed anywhere. I sometimes wonder how they find their way into a restraunt with the unbelievably dumb mistakes they make all day, how they get their buisness degrees is beyond me.

chemoleo - 2-7-2006 at 19:22

It's getting ridiculous!
Quote:
Web video shows world how to make geysers

By DAVID SHARP, Associated Press WriterSat Jul 1, 8:11 AM ET

Americans have a new way to celebrate the Fourth of July: Drop Mentos candies into 2-liter bottles of Diet Coke and watch as the soda shoots skyward. For the messy technique, thank Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz.

The two performers from Buckfield appeared in a three-minute Internet video in which they don goggles and lab coats and show the world how to create the geysers. The resulting 20-foot blasts have captured the imagination of millions.

"We told friends we thought it would take a few weeks to catch on," Grobe said. "Literally, within hours we were seeing thousands of hits."

The two began experimenting eight weeks ago after Voltz learned that cola plus candy equals a frothy mess. It's an old trick, but the pair took it to new extremes.

Grobe, a juggler, and Voltz, a trial lawyer, enlisted Mike Miclon, the owner of the theater where they perform, to operate the camera and a friend to create the toe-tapping techno music soundtrack. Miclon said his wife held an umbrella next to the camera just in case.

The result is their video, which features 523 Mentos causing 101 bottles of Diet Coke to erupt.

The geysers have been compared to the dancing fountain at Las Vegas' Bellagio hotel-casino.

Any kind of soft drink will work, Grobe said, but diet soda keeps the men from getting sticky.

The video has had 4 million hits on the Web since it was posted on June 3 and exposure in the mainstream media, including David Letterman's "Late Show" on CBS and NBC's "Today" show.

Coke and Mentos have embraced the phenomenon. Mentos, a subsidiary of Perfetti Van Melle USA, Inc., features the video on its Web site, and a Coca-Cola Co. spokeswoman said the Atlanta company is pleased that people are having fun with it.

"You never can tell what's going to capture people's imagination," said Susan McDermott, the spokeswoman. For the record, she noted, people won't suffer harm from chomping Mentos and washing it down with Diet Coke.

Grobe said he and Voltz see a bright future in being madcap scientists.

"The next crazy project is bigger and better and will pack a lot of surprise," Grobe said. "You can look forward to something pretty amazing."




Am I the only one in thinking this is really sad, that this is the kind of 'experimenting' we can do where 'no harm is done'?

The_Davster - 2-7-2006 at 19:53

Yeah, while the mentos vids are mildly amusing the first time, if you want more eruptions and such things, we all know what they should really play with. ;)
Its pathetic these days, I spoke to some Ukranian post docs the other day, and I was regailed with tales of proffs placing NI3 randomly around the lecture theater, as well as playing pranks in the dorms 'back in the day' involving suicidal large ammounts of homemade NI3 being sprinkled between bedsheets as a joke. They told me of their element collections they have. Hell, one of these post docs is female and she had just as much fun with explosive pranks when she was young as well. It did not even surprise them when I said, 'yeah I made some of that a while ago, as well as some fulminates in my home lab' That of course led into their stories with fulminates.
And they told me of their home labs they had back in Ukraine. Told the same to a prof once as well, got a really funny look. And that was even when I deliberatly phrased it as if I accidently made SF trying to ppt AgNO3 with EtOH.

Well, I am doing what I can to make demos at least a bit interesting, just to try to do my part to bring the not-so-harmless interesting chemistry back to the young folk. I am now getting well known as the person to go to for demos, despite after each one getting mildly reprimanded for it being too dangerous. They keep coming back though. :D But I got permission to make and use silver fulminate in the next set of demos I do.(They know nothing about it though, other than it is explosive, so that may change)
(Hope this doesent catch up to me some day...)

Nerro - 3-7-2006 at 10:04

That's funny...

I've spoken to three profs about making fireworks and dangerous chemistry and how cool it can be and they all told me grand tales about their pasts and what they made and did...

During our first inorganic practicum we were actually encouraged to play around a little.

benzylchloride1 - 3-7-2007 at 11:57

My general inorganic chemistry professor always put explosive paint under peoples chairs in the class room and lab. Years ago students a my school where allowed to make this stuff and take it home. An accident occured and the administrators banned this extremely fun experiment. I could never get the formula for this compound, but I heard it was made out of red phosphorus. We are still allowed to make nitrocellulose and take it home.

joeflsts - 3-7-2007 at 16:42

Quote:
Originally posted by Quantum
Such is the nature of the modern world. Knowledge is power and chemical knowledge is very suited to a single person. Some people think this dumbing down of science is because of terrorism and such. I however think it is just a side effect of lawsuits and "hippyish thinking" and has just snowballed down from there.

In "the old days" people in general thought of science as mankinds helper and friend. But after the 50's the opinion shifted and we are still seeing the results of that.


I agree with you. I think that terrorism has little to do with the state of science education and science hobbyists. I think lawsuits over stupidity is what causes us most pain.

Joe

not_important - 4-7-2007 at 08:07

Speaking as someone who had a lot of contact with the "`60s counter culture", I don't think you can blame the hippies directly for these developments. Those people were hardly into restricting personal actions, or prohibiting something because "it might be dangerous" They often were misguided in associating natural/safe/good and artificial/bad, but in general their rejection was on a personal and not a legislative base.

The trend was already underway in the `50s and early `60s, before the Flower Children were visible. Even though science was held up as mankind's friend then, and the space race short term boosted science teaching, it was mostly a large scale, institutionalised science. For all their talk of rugged individualism, much of the conservative community of that day supported massive organised research.

Parts of conservative thinking in the US and elsewhere has long had a mistrust of intellectuals and technical learning. I've seen it even today, both a distrust and depreciation of technically knowledgeable people, and of analytical thinking, by the more conservative side of the business community.

Both conservative and liberal sectors have gotten their knickers in a knot over protecting children and the public at large. Be it elbow and knee protection on kids, dumbed down chemistry, naughty words, classic but non PC literature, p0rn, or gay marriage, the world is filled with awful terrors that the public at large must be shielded against. Terrorists are just one more bogeyman that turned out to be a useful excuse to restrict individuals access to 'dagerous' things.

In that regards, I' totally unaware of lawsuits related to 35% H2O2 being a factor in the new controls regarding access to that in Canada. In the US it's protecting children against homemade M80s and flashcrackers that's behind the clampdown on pyrotechnic supplies, with a seasoning of anti-terrorist measures.