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Chemical Experiment

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At the meeting of the Advisors for Student Organizations, my colleagues were discussing how weird this new generation is.

“They live online!” my colleagues kept exclaiming. “They post everything that happens to them on those blogs, Twitters, etc. Kids today are weird!”

I felt like one of these weird kids for obvious reasons, so I decided to live up to my generation’s reputation and post this story I heard at that meeting.

The Chemistry Club requested permission to conduct a certain chemical experiment for educational purposes. Their request was denied.

Who can guess what the experiment in question was?

49 responses to “Chemical Experiment”

  1. danmillerinpanama Avatar
    danmillerinpanama

    Put a 1/2 inch ball of metallic sodium in a bucket otherwise full of water with a tin can over it and see what happens? Of course, after the first time I knew but it was still fun. This was back in the mid – late 1950, and the nanny society was not as pervasive.

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    1. el Avatar
      el

      What happens? Is it meth?

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      1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
        bloggerclarissa

        No, my friends.

        The students simply wanted to brew beer.

        Another shocking news is that student organizations are not allowed to use any beverages that are not made by Pepsi. They can’t even distribute bottled water for free if it isn’t from Pepsi.

        I was kind of floored by this news.

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        1. el Avatar
          el

          *The students simply wanted to brew beer. *

          OMG. And I started already to think of poisons and terrorism.

          Even if modern beer is different from the ones in the Middle Ages, still then everybody, including children, drank it regularly because of bad access to clean water. Now uni students can’t brew it.

          But, after thinking, I am not surprised at all. In US a young person can go die in a war, see unspeakable horrors, but can’t buy alcohol till 21. In this world forbidding the experiment to unable to legally drink students makes sense.

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          1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
            bloggerclarissa

            “But, after thinking, I am not surprised at all. In US a young person can go die in a war, see unspeakable horrors, but can’t buy alcohol till 21. ”

            -Weird, huh?

            Today, at 9 am, I saw a person at the convenience store buying beer and vodka. She must have had a fun night. 🙂

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        2. Jonathan Avatar
          Jonathan

          At my school only Coke products are sold.

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          1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
            bloggerclarissa

            Oh, so my school and your school are in direct competition here. Soft drink wars! 🙂

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            1. llama Avatar
              llama

              Do you have to declare soft drink alliance when submitting papers for publication?

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              1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
                bloggerclarissa

                Not yet. But who knows. . . 😦

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        3. Helena Suess Avatar
          Helena Suess

          Aw, me can’t no good attention pay.

          Here is a story about Pepsi I once heard: a family friend’s dad or uncle, I forget which, served in Desert Storm or Afghanistan, I forget which. There was a real problem, as you might guess, at getting potable water out to the desert so that our troops could bathe and not die of dehydration. Not a problem for our good friends at Pepsico! The army had some kind of deal with Pepsi, and the company sent gobs of soda to the friend’s dad’s (or uncle’s) unit every week. Huge crates of it stamped with the company logo, with notes that said something encouraging, something about Pepsi’s commitment to America’s troops etc. etc. That high-fructose corn syrup caffienated hair tonic was the only non-toxic liquid of any substantial volume available for weeks. The unit drank it, bathed in it, washed clothes with it, brushed their teeth with it. Hooray for Pepsi! Hooray for America!

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          1. el Avatar
            el

            *The unit drank it, bathed in it, washed clothes with it, brushed their teeth with it. *

            Don’t know about Pepsi, but one person talked of Coca Cola as great for washing cars.

            If Coca Cola ruins teeth, may be Pepsi does it too, and thus can eat at the dirt, if used for teeth brushing?

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            1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
              bloggerclarissa

              And Sprite is perfect for washing toilets. You just pour it in and eat eats all the dirt away in seconds.

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            2. Avatar
              Anonymous

              My dad once used Coke to wash away that blue corrosion stuff on a car battery.

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  2. Helena Suess Avatar
    Helena Suess

    They wanted to cook meth, didn’t they?

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      It wasn’t that bad. 🙂

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      1. Helena Suess Avatar
        Helena Suess

        Then they probably wanted to:

        (a) smoke a whole bunch of pot,
        (b) have a whole bunch of sex, or
        (c) destroy something in a cool way

        FOR SCIENCE.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          Science begins to sound really cool. 🙂

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          1. Helena Suess Avatar
            Helena Suess

            This science is totally cool:

            http://www.studiodaily.com/main/searchlist/6850.html

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            1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
              bloggerclarissa

              It’s beautiful.

              But am I the only person who finds this a little disturbing? I’m now kind of scared of my body.

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              1. Helena Suess Avatar
                Helena Suess

                Your body is always doing all this teeny tiny stuff! You have whole worlds of things happening inside you all the time! You think you’re sitting still but mitochondria is happening! You can’t fight it! You can’t stop it! You’ll die if it ends and it ends when you die! IT IS WHO YOU ARE.

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              2. Helena Suess Avatar
                Helena Suess

                stufftofreakyououtwhenyouarehigh.txt

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              3. bloggerclarissa Avatar
                bloggerclarissa

                Now you are just trying to freak me out on purpose! 🙂 🙂

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          2. FellBeast Avatar
            FellBeast

            Of course it’s cool. How could you not know that?!

            I’m currently trying to make intestinal bacteria glow in the dark.

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            1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
              bloggerclarissa

              Dare I enquire how you do that? 🙂

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              1. Avatar
                Anonymous

                “Dare I enquire how you do that?”

                Eat some luminol.

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              2. Lindsay Avatar
                Lindsay

                You could insert the gene for this protein (or this one) into the bacterial chromosome … you couldn’t really use this method to make them glow while they were inside you, though, since you’d have to take them out (or just order some; E. coli is a very common intestinal bacterium for genetic experimentation, since it was one of the first organisms to have its entire genome mapped!).

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  3. feMOMhist Avatar
    feMOMhist

    synthesizing meth? And yes even after TTLAC brought in an outside speaker to “explain” the online lives of our students, I’m still started at for using a laptop at meetings and my professorial FB account is frowned upon. SIGH

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  4. V Avatar
    V

    I can imagine so many things that I cannot really decide :).

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  5. el Avatar
    el

    Something to do with drugs or alcohol? Poisons or an explosion with danger of being applied for terrorist purposes?

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  6. Djiril Avatar
    Djiril

    bloggerclarissa :
    No, my friends.
    The students simply wanted to brew beer.
    Another shocking news is that student organizations are not allowed to use any beverages that are not made by Pepsi. They can’t even distribute bottled water for free if it isn’t from Pepsi.
    I was kind of floored by this news.

    My biology class brewed a tiny amount of beer in test tubes, but it wasn’t enough to drink. I can see how hey might be reluctant to give permission if your is a “dry” campus. Students could start seeing home brewing “for science” as a loophole in the policy. Still, I think they should have gotten permission.

    The part about “nothing but Pepsi products” disgusts me. The students and faculty at Humboldt State would never stand for that!

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      The university gets a lot of money from Pepsi for it, I hear.

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  7. David Bellamy Avatar
    David Bellamy

    We have a “Coke products only” policy here at my university, also. I think that Pepsi and Coca-Cola pay a lot for these contracts. As a person who does not drink sodas, this limits my choices, although Coke owns Minute-Maid orange juice and Dasani water. Coffee can still be brewed locally.

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    1. Tim Avatar
      Tim

      I have heard that those contracts exist for regular schools too… is that true ?

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      1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
        bloggerclarissa

        Yes, I think it is. These people are everywhere. 😦

        Of course, if the government gave back what it owed to us, a state university, we would probably not have to sell our souls to Pepsi.

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  8. Isabel Avatar
    Isabel

    This is a true story: Some friends of mine were making a cartoon for MTV, about some “bad boy” adolescents. In one scene the boys are bored at a very prim and proper girl’s birthday party so they decide to spike the drinks with alcohol. The censors made them change it to poison.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      How could you do this to me?? I was drinking tea and just spit it all over myself with laughter. This is the best story ever!!!!!!!!!!

      Thank you!!

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      1. Isabel Avatar
        Isabel

        Haha you’re welcome. Incredible isn’t it? 🙂

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          I don’t have words for it.

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  9. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    Lol 🙂 My university has whole courses on brewing beer! Including tasting it! For science!

    No seriously, you can take a specialisation in beverage technology and you get to use several labs to brew everything from juice over beer to spirituous beverages.

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    1. V Avatar
      V

      There is the whole department of beer brewing at Munich Technical University 🙂

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      1. Helena Suess Avatar
        Helena Suess

        There is a whole department of beer drinking at Munich Technical University.

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        1. V Avatar
          V

          More than one department 🙂 🙂

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          1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
            bloggerclarissa

            OK, why are we all not going to that great university right now?

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  10. Paul Tiderman Avatar
    Paul Tiderman

    Did it have anything to do with sexuality?

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      I’d like to imagine that chemical experiment. 🙂 No, it was just about brewing beer.

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    2. V Avatar
      V

      Paul, are you envisioning the synthesis of a perfect aphrodisiac?

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  11. Dorkboy Avatar
    Dorkboy

    I count myself lucky to be at a university with a department of viticulture. There are also plenty of classes on beer brewing.

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  12. A Breakthrough With Freshmen « Clarissa's Blog Avatar
    A Breakthrough With Freshmen « Clarissa's Blog

    […] indifferent freshmen? I tried everything to connect with them but nothing worked. Until today. I shared this story with them (only I substituted blogging with texting, for obvious reasons), and finally, almost at the end of […]

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  13. Jennifer Frances Armstrong Avatar
    Jennifer Frances Armstrong

    I remember all the great science experiments we did as part of “science club”. We made fireworks that singed the roof of the lab and put together “lip gloss” from glycerine and colouring. I’m sure we would have been allowed to brew beer had we requested to.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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