Posted on 05/02/2013 9:48:34 AM PDT by Zakeet
Science experiments don't always go the way they are intended. This, a 16-year-old Florida teenager knows all too well.
This week, Kiera Wilmot went to school and mixed some household chemicals in a tiny 8-ounce water bottle. It looked like a simple chemistry project but then the top popped off when a small explosion occurred.
Wilmot, who is in good standing as a student, said it was an accident. The Bartow High School principal told a local television station that the teen made a “bad choice” and called her a a good kid who has never previously been in trouble.
“Honestly, I don't think she meant to ever hurt anyone,” Principal Ron Pritchard told a Tampa Bay television station. “She wanted to see what would happen [when the chemicals mixed] and was shocked by what it did. Her mother is shocked too.”
In another era, Wilmot may have gotten scolded and sent back to class. But in this age of zero-tolerance policies, Wilmot is in deep trouble. She was arrested on Monday morning after the incident and charged with possession and discharge of a weapon on school property and discharging a destructive device.
In turn, she was expelled and will finish her high school years in an expulsion program.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I am not much of a chemist.
I did know not to mix bleach & household cleaners.
I visited a 1-5 grade science fair over the weekend. There were many different experiments involving Mentos and coke.
It turns out that if you cut up or pulverize the mentos, the height of the resultant emission is reduced.
Some toilet bowl cleaners will react with the aluminum to form hydrogen - boom!
1 and formost the teacher needed to pre-screen all projects before display and or activation to determine any dangers/hazards.
If that wasnt done the adult supervisors were at fault ,not the child,student,trainee etc!
“In turn, she was expelled and will finish her high school years in an expulsion program.”
This is punishment?! If the kid is smart, she could probably graduate from high school around the age of 16 now, get an Associates Degree from a Community College around the time her friends are finishing up indoctrination camp, and coast through a university on scholarships if she plays her cards right! Someone has to tell this kid that expulsion over something this stupid is a blessing in disguise!
My, I got a good laugh out of your post!
I made nitroglycerin in my chemistry class as a Freshman in high school... I tried to make numerous explosives, most failed, but not all...
That’s how you learn. It was exciting...
What really matters here is did she do this with kids immediately around her or did she do this in a relatively clear area. About the worst that could have happened here is someone being hit by a flying plastic bottle or toilet bowl cleaner in the eyes. Hardly worthy of a felony.
We have lost our way as a country. We destroy the best among us and lift the worst and then wonder why we are decline.
When I was 15 I had a class project go awry and it accidentally blew up. I ended up with an “A” for the class and I went on to become a chemical engineer. This student’s experience demonstrates that she (along with just about every other student in the public schools) would be better off just about anywhere else.
I bet that this experiment had to do with Drano and aluminum shavings in a water bottle. Makes a nasty little boom.........
Hydrazine and its derivatives are not very stable and will react with any oxidizer in an explosive or near explosive manner.
She was not at a high school, she was at an educator salary payer.
Education was not involved, educators getting paid to attend a kid’s corral was involved
Public School is to education what a Public restroom is to hygiene...........
Back when I was going to school, we set off firecrackers when we wanted to. No one said anything, no one thought anything about it.
Exactly. Nobody wants to address those questions.
Banning Volcanos?
Where will that lead to next?
When I was in college one of the students in the organic chemistry lab accidentally produced some nitroglycerine when he or she used glycerine to lubricate some glass fittings. They had to evacuate the lab while the O’Chem professor developed a procedure for the safe disposal of it.
Exactly.
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