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bfesser
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More young'uns than I had expected. I don't know if I should be dismayed or delighted.
Dismayed, because young chemists will <em>always</em> do stupid things—I know I did—and we're encouraging them!
Delighted, because there may be hope for a future generation of chemists, despite their parents' chemophobia.
[Edited on 6/22/13 by bfesser]
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plante1999
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Both, it depend on who you are talking about. For some member, I would be "dismayed" and some "delighted". Depend more on the guy, than the age.
I never asked for this.
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bfesser
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As for you, <strong>plante1999</strong>, I'm dismayed, and frankly, a little worried. 
Perhaps you could that it depends more on the <em>individual</em> than on the age of that individual. We need to encourage young women to
become interested in chemistry and the hard sciences, not exclude them. (Yes, I know that people casually refer to people of either sex as "guys".
In writing, it's poor practice.)
[Edited on 6/22/13 by bfesser]
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ParadoxChem126
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Quote: Originally posted by bfesser  |
Dismayed, because young chemists will <em>always</em> do stupid things—I know I did—and we're encouraging them!
[Edited on 6/22/13 by bfesser] |
I do my best not to do anything stupid.
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plante1999
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| Quote: Originally posted by bfesser | As for you, <strong>plante1999</strong>, I'm dismayed, and frankly, a little worried.
Perhaps you could that it depends more on the <em>individual</em> than on the age of that individual. We need to encourage young women to
become interested in chemistry and the hard sciences, not exclude them. (Yes, I know that people casually refer to people of either sex as "guys".
In writing, it's poor practice.)
[Edited on 6/22/13 by bfesser] |
Sorry, I'm not a pro at writing English yet.
Not sure it is a good thing that you are dismayed about me... But I find that if you are worried, it means I have some value as a chemist ha ha ha ha.
I never asked for this.
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prof_genius
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You are not the only 12 year old here. (Im 12)
[Edited on 6-8-2013 by prof_genius]
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TheChemiKid
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| Quote: Originally posted by hkparker | I'm just turning 18! I feel pretty young for this forum and know I know far less then the senior members here, but I'm pretty sure I'll be here for
quite a while  |
Wow, you feel young! I'm 12.
When the police come
\( * O * )/ ̿̿ ̿̿ ̿'̿'̵͇̿̿з=༼ ▀̿̿Ĺ̯̿̿▀̿ ̿ ༽
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Oscilllator
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| Quote: Originally posted by bfesser | We need to encourage young women to become interested in chemistry and the hard sciences, not exclude them. (Yes, I know that people casually refer
to people of either sex as "guys". In writing, it's poor practice.)
[Edited on 6/22/13 by bfesser] |
Just as an interesting fact: I hear that nowadays the gender discrepancy in biology can be greater than that in Phys/chem because so many women end up
doing biology. Surprising!
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MichiganMadScientist
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| Quote: Originally posted by bfesser | More young'uns than I had expected. I don't know if I should be dismayed or delighted.
Dismayed, because young chemists will <em>always</em> do stupid things—I know I did—and we're encouraging them!
Delighted, because there may be hope for a future generation of chemists, despite their parents' chemophobia.
[Edited on 6/22/13 by bfesser] |
For the record, I'm somewhere between 25-30 years old..
As has been pointed out, age is not necessarily the big factor here. Certainly, maturity has a lot to do with this (I work in a military environment,
and you should see the 18 years olds that I have to deal with. They are like 12 year olds....), but kids can be safe and smart just like adults.
However, I think EDUCATION and UNDERSTANDING has the biggest role here. If you don't actually have a real understanding of the chemicals you're
working with, you will not have as great of respect for them safety wise. And, our average teenage-chemist is simply not likely to possess much in the
way of formal chemistry lab education.
Still, I would NEVER trust any SMART teen under 16 year olds to work with concentrated acids/etc. without proper supervision. I mean, they may
be smarter than the average teen, but they are still KIDS! Just my 2 cents...
And for your average typical kid, no serious chemicals without supervision until at least 18...
We have all given ourselves Nitric Acid tattoos in our freshmen-level university labs, but hopefully, most of us older people have moved on from this
stage...
[Edited on 26-8-2013 by MichiganMadScientist]
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plante1999
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| Quote: Originally posted by MichiganMadScientist |
Still, I would NEVER trust any SMART teen under 16 year olds to work with concentrated acids/etc. without proper supervision. I mean, they may
be smarter than the average teen, but they are still KIDS! Just my 2 cents...
And for your average typical kid, no serious chemicals without supervision until at least 18...
[Edited on 26-8-2013 by MichiganMadScientist] |
Since a very early age I worked with concentrated acid, halogen, oxidizing agent etc.. I'm also reputed to be a bit mad. I never feared
chemistry at all. And I have almost nothing of all theses year then some permanent face burns from a small mistake, especially that I was without ANY
supervision for all these years.
Some of my more "mad" experiments are not repertoried on the web too, but be assured I am safe in my experiments, more so then most graduating
chemists.
Look 50-70s chemistry video, and how chemist worked back then. Its mostly like that that I work.
I don't believe in restriction of uses in lab of dangerous chem, nor fear of them, and especially not from people that never worked like real
chemists.
Just my 2 cent ha ha.
[Edited on 26-8-2013 by plante1999]
I never asked for this.
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MichiganMadScientist
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| Quote: | | [quote=296857&tid=16170&author=plante1999]I'm also reputed to be a bit mad. I never feared chemistry at all. |
We are all a bit mad, . Chemicals are nothing to be feared, but they must always be respected
| Quote: | | And I have almost nothing of all theses year then some permanent face burns from a small mistake, especially that I was without ANY supervision for
all these years. Some of my more "mad" experiments are not repertoried on the web too, but be assured I am safe in my experiments, more so then most
graduating chemists. |
| Quote: | | Look 50-70s chemistry video, and how chemist worked back then. Its mostly like that that I work. |
Hmmm....How do you mean? If anything, people were less safe with chemicals in the past. Today, we now know that a lot of the heavily used chemicals of
yesteryear are carcinogenic. I often joke that all usefull chemicals (e.g. benzene, etc.) are eventually found to be somehow cancerous.
This is also a good reason to practice caution when dealing with even seemingly harmless chemicals like acetone. Limit skin exposure, wear gloves,
etc. Who knows? We may discover acetone to be harmfull 50 years from now...
| Quote: | | I don't believe in restriction of uses in lab of dangerous chem, nor fear of them, and especially not from people that never worked like real
chemists. |
Again, I feel its more of a respect thing than a fear thing. From your posts, it pretty much sounds like we are on the same page here regarding this.
"Real" chemists can get careless, too. Safety practices are super enforced in
undergrad teaching labs, but I happen to know that in the research labs, safety goggles aren't always worn as much as they should be. Having said
this, people who work in these labs have already developed a very thorough set of safe chemistry lab practices...
A Good Example:
Don't get me wrong, I'm ALL for letting teens experiment with chemistry. It just needs to happen in a proper enviroment. In the US, we often
take young children deer hunting. We teach them how to shoot a firearm even at a young age. But we start them out by first heavily emphasizing safety
issues. Guns are not cool toys. They are machines designed to do little more than Kill. A 12 year old simply hasn't lived long enough to appreciate
fully the meaning of dangerous. An older child (a teen) has a better grasp on the seriousness of a firearm, but still cannot be universally expected
to have the ability and maturity to ALWAYS make safe decisions. And with guns and chemicals, there is NO ROOM for even ONE TIME mistakes. That one
mistake could mean acid in one's eyes or shooting oneself in the head. That's why we have adults. Adults may never need to intervene because the
child is responsible enough, but the Adult should still be there in most cases, just in case.
[Edited on 26-8-2013 by MichiganMadScientist]
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plante1999
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70s chemist were less careful, but much better, and didn't had that much more harmed then modern ones. Everything is toxic anyway, its simple logic of
how an organism work. As such I use general care with everything, not caring there toxicity, unless it is extreme, like hydrogen cyanide. I feel it is
the way to go.
I never asked for this.
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Pyro
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Im 17, from '96
My mother is always worried about me blowing up stuff and my dad encourages me!
I come home very happy one day with the bottle of P4 (Late for dinner) and at the dining table I show them my nice white P4 and explain what it is and
how I made it.
My mother says: ''are you sure its safe? you need to be careful not to drop it! you'll burn the boat down one day!''
and my dad says:''Cool, you going to make a grenade and use it in the sleepstraat (a street here where all the non-whites live)?''
and my chemistry teacher doesn't even think I should be experimenting with I2 or HCl!
all above information is intellectual property of Pyro. |
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MichiganMadScientist
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| Quote: | | you'll burn the boat down one day!'' |
Lolwut? 
Does your family live on a boat or something???
| Quote: | | and my dad says:''Cool, you going to make a grenade and use it in the sleepstraat (a street here where all the non-whites live)?''
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...Lolwuuuuuuuuut???
Seriously. Europeans crack me up.... Over here in the U.S., we tend to think of Canadians as being a cutesy, gentle people with a slightly-odd accent.
Canadians just seem so harmless. But you Europeans are like, "Elemental Iodine?, Jolly Good Fun!!"
I wish I could play with Iodine crystals and not get arrested over here...
[Edited on 26-8-2013 by MichiganMadScientist]
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neptunium
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78...
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Pyro
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Sure we do, there is already a GL45 sized I2 stain on the ash floor  been there
almost a year, so I guess she might be right. (I thought the cap was clean and put it on the floor in front of the heater to dry.
Lol, you know how many people who first hear about my interest in chemistry ask if I can make a bomb for the allochtonen (basically non whites and
Romanians and such)
What exactly would you like to do with I2 crystals? stain you fingers? stain other things?
all above information is intellectual property of Pyro. |
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PeeWee2000
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19 here, born in 94'.
@Michigan Pssh playing with iodine isnt a big deal you can even buy it on ebay (just dont mix it with sulfuric acid ) but coming across some elemental phosphorus like pyro over there now that would
really be something! Guess were stuck in the mud until meth becomes legal :\
“Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.”
― Leon Trotsky
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Texium
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This poll is pretty interesting. I would have never expected that my age group (I'm currently 16, born in '97) would be the largest group on the
forum, at least as of now anyway.
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numos
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| Quote: Originally posted by Oscilllator | | Quote: Originally posted by bfesser | We need to encourage young women to become interested in chemistry and the hard sciences, not exclude them. (Yes, I know that people casually refer
to people of either sex as "guys". In writing, it's poor practice.)
[Edited on 6/22/13 by bfesser] |
Just as an interesting fact: I hear that nowadays the gender discrepancy in biology can be greater than that in Phys/chem because so many women end up
doing biology. Surprising! |
Yes!! I agree here, not just biology, medicine especially too, our school has an entire academy dedicated to working in the medical field.
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bismuthate
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| Quote: Originally posted by zts16 | | This poll is pretty interesting. I would have never expected that my age group (I'm currently 16, born in '97) would be the largest group on the
forum, at least as of now anyway. |
Me niether although now I'm guessing in five or six years my group (2000-2004 I'm 13 with only 4 people in my age group as of now judging by the poll)
will be the dominant group. What do you all think this poll will look like in a few years?
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Texium
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Interesting, it appears that although there haven't been any more replies to this thread in a long time, the 1995-1999 age group has continued to pull
ahead by a wider margin, unless I'm misremembering the number of votes that were placed last time I looked at this thread.
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Amos
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'95 here(19 at the time of posting). I'm actually surprised there are so many older participants here. You pull up a chemistry youtube channel and the
majority of the time you're being taught syntheses by a 15 year-old, it seems.
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BromicAcid
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I started doing chemistry experiments in my back yard in 1995, I was 12 at the time. Aside from a few posts to sci.chem on the Usenet I was working
completely solo. I didn't have anyone to brag to or ask questions from so I read and read and read. The internet was considerably less useful at the
time, at least for me.
Within 2 years I had a supply of nitric acid I had distilled. Copious quantities of solvents, bases, halogens (I was stockpiling bromine) and quite a
bit more. By the time I joined the forum in 2003 I was making phosphorus, alkali metals, and plenty more. Again, to that point I had been working in
a vacuum. I wish I had taken better notes on everything I did, for nearly a year I was making and decomposing acetates to see what I would get.
Nothing from that time is recorded here.
The point of all of this is, just as mentioned above, maybe there are some 12 year olds that do not have the maturity for this, and I was likely one
of them. Consider the scars on my hands and arms from strong acids / bases or my bad eyesight from my sodium hydroxide electrolysis cell. But then
again I am much better for it, I was able to breeze through chemistry in high school and most of college. I feel as long as you are actually learning
what you do, taking the time to read up on the reactions and the hazards and understand them then age should hardly factor in at all. But if you are
just copying something from youtube you get significantly less out of it and might not fully appreciate the true hazards of the reaction.
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cpman
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Wow! I'm surprised that my age group ('95-'99) is the biggest! (I'm 17, born in '97.)
I'd expected the biggest group to be slightly older.
I'm glad that this is the largest group. Even this poll is only a small percentage of the total members of the forum, it is good to see that there is
still a good number of younger people interested in science.
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Brain&Force
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Yeah - I've always kinda felt that there's a few groups at Sciencemadness that we all fall into, and the teen chemist group seems to be the biggest.
At the end of the day, simulating atoms doesn't beat working with the real things...
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