Science that makes you cringe

[Kim]

The adult in the pic isn't doing a good job of leading by example regarding the goggles.

They probably couldn't find a set that were three times too big for his head.

(It's likely that the kids are wearing goggles borrowed from the staff room, as they're suspiciously transparent.)

[Pingu]

That is the school's entire PPE budget blown there. And their gas cylinder.

[Pickled Onion]

Girl's long hair is loose.

And ties should be tucked into shirts.

[T42]

PPE budget? What a bunch of ninnies. In our school it was "front row move back a bit" then the master ducked down behind his bench and used tongs to heave a chunk of potassium into a vat of water. He got wet.  The flash & the bang were fun too.

[Flite]

Science was much more fun in the middle of 20thC
Dippping fingers into a dish of mercury because it was just weird stuff. Then pushing beads of mercury around the bench till they fell down the cracks and were lost forever.
Plenty of bangs and fizzy things, and never a thought of safety goggles.
Actually it hadn't changed much when I was teaching in the 1970s

[drossall]

One of the boys in my class set his hair on fire over a bunsen burner (accidentally). Fashion was for longer hair then, of course.

[TheLurker]

Science was much more fun in the middle of 20thC
Dippping fingers into a dish of mercury because it was just weird stuff. Then pushing beads of mercury around the bench till they fell down the cracks and were lost forever.
Plenty of bangs and fizzy things, and never a thought of safety goggles.
Actually it hadn't changed much when I was teaching in the 1970s

Aye, it was pretty laissez faire but then again... I bet that these days they don't have the Chemistry teacher getting in a bit of a flap trying to work out where the bloody hell the smear of phosphorus* is that has just given one of us spotty teenage oiks a nasty chemical burn.

*I think it was P, but it was 45 years ago and memory fades...

[drossall]

Friend of mine used to tell tales of a chemistry teacher dropping sodium into drains.

[Flite]

And there was the time we had a probationary teacher who had us using mouth pipettes to measure sodium hydroxide - with predicable results.

[hellymedic]

One of the boys in my class set his hair on fire over a bunsen burner (accidentally). Fashion was for longer hair then, of course.

Our school was liberal about hair styles and some of the boys had WILD 'Jewfros' Afros or long hair. Only rules about hair were
'Hair must be clean, combed and tidy. Long hair must be tied back for Science and sport/PE.

I think our ties were restrained by our lab coats.

[rr]

Friend of mine used to tell tales of a chemistry teacher dropping sodium into drains.

I did that in the sixth form and looked all innocent as the mushroom cloud emerged from the sink.

Sent from my motorola edge 20 using Tapatalk

[rr]

And there was the time we had a probationary teacher who had us using mouth pipettes to measure sodium hydroxide - with predicable results.

We pipetted by mouth at o level

Sent from my motorola edge 20 using Tapatalk

[Mrs Pingu]

I think the only thing I've ever pipetted by mouth was drinking water samples for bug plates.

[Pingu]

Everybody should mouth pipette acetone for the lolz.

[chrisbainbridge]

Making NI3

[rafletcher]

Friend of mine used to tell tales of a chemistry teacher dropping sodium into drains.

I did that in the sixth form and looked all innocent as the mushroom cloud emerged from the sink.

Sent from my motorola edge 20 using Tapatalk

I made gun cotton in Chemistry club. And TNI. We also used Bromine to demonstrate Brownian motion, with a bucket of Ammonia as a counter-measure IIRC. And a bucket of water to rinse off the Ammonia. Oh, and demonstrated the breaking of the sound barrier by putting a sealed water-containing test tube over a Bunsen burner until the pressure built sufficiently for the tube to rupture. We did have a screen for that on.

Lewes Priory School, C1973.

[Giraffe]

When I first started in a lab we used to pipette cyanide solution by mouth.
One chap said that he might have gone a bit too far, antidote used with great glee, cue green shit for a couple of days.
Did lead to a change, though.

[Bluebottle]

Everybody should mouth pipette acetone for the lolz.

I can neither confirm nor deny if I have a former colleaugue who learnt their lesson by overzealously mouth pipetting phenol.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Bloody BBC, mixing up power and energy again.

On a single day in November, more than 70% of electricity was produced by wind, or around 20GW.

FFS, does it cost you to insert an 'h'?

[JonBuoy]

Bloody BBC, mixing up power and energy again.

On a single day in November, more than 70% of electricity was produced by wind, or around 20GW.

FFS, does it cost you to insert an 'h'?

I don't think that it is as simple as just adding an 'h'.

After a quick Google I suspect that they are indeed getting confused by power and energy and may possibly be ignoring other renewables in their stats.

There may have been another 'green' day later in the month but this has similar numbers but presented very differently: https://reneweconomy.com.au/new-renewables-record-as-uk-wind-generation-blows-past-20gw/

Hopefully someone will be along in a bit who either knows what they are talking about or who has more time than me to dig out the info.

[rogerzilla]

Everybody should mouth pipette acetone for the lolz.

I can neither confirm nor deny if I have a former colleaugue who learnt their lesson by overzealously mouth pipetting phenol.

Supposedly printers, who use toluene as a solvent to clean the presses, inhale enough of it to suffer from a  condition known as "tolly ring", which is like the wire spiders but with added heat.

[citoyen]

"Why you shouldn't truncate the Y axis"

https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/1616951506493931520?s=20&t=djkHPPcqjvR-dLTcjbcf6g

 

[Giraffe]

Science or math?
[the object] has a footprint of half a cubic metre.

[drossall]

"Why you shouldn't truncate the Y axis"

https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/1616951506493931520?s=20&t=djkHPPcqjvR-dLTcjbcf6g

 

No, the problem there is truncating the Y axis but not truncating the trunks (or the legs). It's perfectly possible to truncate an axis and convey information clearly, but it's rarely possible to do so when you send contradictory signals at the same time, as they've done by showing whole figures with partial axes.

[Kim]

There's also a linear vs area/volume scale factor issue, though it's not so bad when it refers to the height of human beings (which do tend to scale in all dimensions anyway).