What is Digg?86 Comments
- StevoCJ, on 10/12/2007, -3/+54What are you talking about? Noone got hurt and the teacher obviously knew what he was doing. This is exactly what we need to engage pupils instead of boring them to death.
- Angostura, on 10/12/2007, -1/+38He is exactly the kind of science teacher that I hope my kids *do* have.
- Grimdotdotdot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+27Yeah - he didn't set fire to the classroom at all.
Inaccurate ++ - vudicarus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+26damn it. i was clicking through just waiting to see the ceiling catch on fire, the teacher and kids freak, the fire engines coming.....the story title lead me on.
- nixonrichard, on 10/12/2007, -1/+25From the article, he intended to have such a big flame and everything was controlled. He's trying to teach kids the dangers of milk.
- fallingstars, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20The point of the article is that in today's society, a little showmanship can encourage kids to further their scientific education. It's either that or let them sleep through another film...
beep. - JHawk24821, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20@ IvanB: Way to go for close-minded thinking, let's stick to that status quo people! After all, our education system seems to be working _wonders_ as it is now.
@ StevoCJ: I could not agree with you more, make it fun, kinds will remember it. - toby34a, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13This is cool stuff, and a great way to get people into science. At my high school, we had a teacher that would light flour on fire in a controlled environment... make a big old flame. It was awesome.
Good teaching doesn't require prankish stunts, but it DOES require communicating at the level of the student to get them interested in the subject and furthermore to understand it. From the pics, it probably would've been better to have a more controlled environment, but doesn't mark me as being completely over the line. - HouD, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11What in the HELL did you just say?
- 0crabby0, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Well, I guess I'm going to have to scrap my plans for having the largest Sea-side Sodium mine in the world.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10do you mean sodium?
sodium and potassium catch on fire / explode when dropped in water. - cleverboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Yeah, I read Ivan's post along with the Digg description, and went reading the article expecting disaster. Sheesh. This is a "great job" for a science teacher to have done. Pats on the back all around. --One danger though? Nascent pyromaniac students who's eyes grow wide with possibilities. --But, hey... whatcanyado?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Excellent teacher - thats how its done. My chemistry teacher was the same (but about 50yrs old). Coolest teacher in school - blew a window out of the chem lab one day doing an experiment with some kind of metal powder.
- JHawk24821, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"lit them on fire with a lighter and it made a little flame thing."
A flame "thing"? This, ladies and gentlemen, is the product of your taxes dollars at work by way of public education. - Beaver6813, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8That teacher is great, hes doing exactly what teachers should be doing, engaging the class. And who wouldn't be engaged with that! Unfortunately the kids didn't look horrified, excited, but just bored... kids these days *rolls eyes*
- Angostura, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7 I bet you got top marks for your write-up of the experiment.
- TheBritishGuy1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Inaccurate title, the classroom never caught on fire.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7As surprising as it may seem, this is a real problem. My great uncle used to design containers for transporting flour, because there was a problem at the time with transporting large amounts of it without it exploding.
The reason lies in the fact that it's a powder. The friction created by the immense surface area when the powder moves around is large enough to burn it. In a closed container, this can create a violent explosion.
Sidenote: Flash picture galleries suck. - Zarks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7My old chemistry teacher told us how when he was a kid his teacher threw a huge lump of sodium into a swimming pool --> big explosion
Sadly the most i've ever seen is a small lump thrown into a bucket. Damn health & safety! - Angostura, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Is it pointless? No. Do you think that the pupils in that school will forget that seemingly inert substances can become highly reactive when divided into sufficiently small particles?
No. - blapierre, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9Ever try dropping calcium in water?
- MisterEd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I am amazed he didn't burn off his eyebrows or set fire to the roof panels.
- Corvidae, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Somewhere on the net you'll read about a high school teacher that let the kids handle a strip of pure sodium. Which was quickly stolen by one of the kids....Who's net class turned out to be biology. Fish Tank + Sodium = glass in the wall on the other side of the room.
I knew there was a reason I hated that school. The idiot quota was seriously maxed out. - usherzx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5pics of the blazing inferno:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/flash/page/0,,1927850,00.html - ElBob, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6The kids in that class will never forget what they learned that day. Its demonstrations and sidetracks like that that really make learning easy. I had a physics teacher that would ADD on everything and talk about random things in class, and it was because of this that he is the best teacher in the world. I will never forget some of the things he taught that year.
- bornio, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10thats the way teaching should be! sometimes, you just have to see RESULTS, and not a god damn blackboard all day. kthxbai
- nepawoods, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4hey Beavis, check it out - I'm lighting the bubbles in the bath tub
- Reziarfg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6The monarch butterfly has brightly colored spots to warn off preditors of its toxic body.
beep. - mst3kcrow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I love seeing links go from fark to digg and vice versa. :)
- Angostura, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Sodium? Pah. Try Lithium old boy. Kaboom.
- DijonWolfie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Almost fell off my chair when I read this article! That is my old school.. and that is my old chemistry teacher. He taught me in his first year at the school and back then the flame was held at arms length and he HAS lost his eyebrows more than once!
A few things to clarfiy: That room is a specialist chemistry lab meaning all the surfaces, the floor, the ceiling tiles are all flame retardant so there is very little danger of him setting fire to anything except his lab coat.
Science is pretty much a dangerous thing if you don't know what you are doing.. but as long as that environment is safe then you can do an awful lot without ever posing much of a danger. As one of his ex-pupils I have to say the only things I remember from A Level chemistry are what I learnt in his lessons. He is a top chap and keen canoeist (his car reg is C4N03 or similar) and has really mastered the art of keeping children amused. These children are year 10 children so first year GCSEs, (I can tell as I also had a grey band on my blazer like these children and I left 4 years ago), and probably explains why they always look bored! - friend18, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The funny thing is the kids still look bored.
- Angostura, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Probably aluminium powder. I commend the teacher for his flour demonstration, through a perspex screen between the powder and the pupils might be a reasonable idea.
- Duncast, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Now why didn't I attend this school? My experiments were horribly boring...
As for the childish pranks comments, toby34a put it nicely as "Good teaching doesn't require prankish stunts, but it DOES require communicating at the level of the student to get them interested in the subject and furthermore to understand it." I myself am an ESL teacher with elementary school kids, and trust me, f your not keeping the subject matter interesting by playing games, watching TV, or other such activities, they go right out of control. At this level though, well I'm sure you all remember how tedious Maths or English was. - narzy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3oh neutrascrub how your lack of google skills sadden me...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&hs=3qv&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=dissected+a+living+dog+in+front+of+the+class&spell=1 - Joe091, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3When I was in high school we had a science teacher that set all kinds of stuff on fire. It was awesome. I can't really remember why, but he filled balloons up with some gases and lit them on fire, and set other random things ablaze. Good times, good times...
- geekchic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Reminds me of my old physics teacher who used to poke fun at all the rules he had to obey. One regulation placed a limit on the radioactivity level of materials he was allowed to buy from official supplies for experiments.
So he used to go out and buy smoke detectors and take them apart - that got around the regs very nicely. - DECwakeboarder, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3If you never had a science teacher who did something like this then you're really missing out. First year chem teacher lit his desk on fire, blew up a pumpkin, watched thermite burn through the engine of a car, and many other things. Second year chem teacher did something similar to what was described in the article, as well as filling practically the whole school with sulfur.
I'd have to say that things like that can not only be fun and keep students interested in class but CAN foster creative and logical thinking (maybe not so much logical, but at least get students interested and thinking on their own about things instead of just memorizing equations). - domr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Our chemistry teacher did the lithium/sodium/potassium + water thing.
Unfortunately she insticntively tried to put the fire out by putting it in the sink and turning the tap on... big mistake. - jmzook, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3IvanB, you are the kind of person who wants to take all the fun out things, just because they are "dangerous". This has to be one of the best science teachers out there, or at least the coolest. I had an eighth grade science teacher who did stuff like this, and it was awesome. One time we went out onto the soccer field with a bucket of water and a chunk of pure sodium, put the two together, and BOOM! Nobody was hurt, because we stood far enough away, and the teacher used a long string to set it off. We need more teachers like this, and fewer paranoid parents.
- EmileVictor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3You can do this with a dry waterbottle, flour and an ignition source. Fill the waterbottle with flour and squirt it at the flame.
I didn't just suggest you do that, so don't do it, btw! - ceralor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2My teacher did the same thing to demonstrate the explosion of the flour mill in Timeline (the good book not the bad movie). He put flour in a paper tube and blew it out across a Bunsen burner, and formed a long flame that went waaay to the back of the room.
I did that as a trick on halloween afterwards. - egb6550, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Does he still have his job?.. I'm sure some paranoid parents are gonna get him
- shortcircuit13, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Look around you. Just... look around you.
Do you know what we're looking for? Yes, we are looking calcium.
... DANGER HELVETICA!
"intelligent calcium" is so-called because it is sentient. That is, it is aware of its surroundings. Write tat down in your copybooks now. - Ghost666, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2That was fantastic! I would have loved to have seen something like that in one of my classes in High School. Mind you, slight closet pyro here... Anyway, my kudos to someone willing to take a walk on the riskier side of education!
- nixonrichard, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4It looks like our friends in the UK have adopted Bush's "no child left unburned" program.
- Duncast, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3he did? I dont remember that.
- JackHallows, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Looks like something my chem teacher would have done on a regular basis if he was allowed.
- finglonger, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I'd say one of the things that made chemistry more interesting was when my teacher had a demonstration of various chemical reactions. The best one was where he made soap bubbles of methane (methane is lighter than air) and poked them with a candle when they floated sufficiently high enough. The resulting flame across the ceiling was fantastic.
- DijonWolfie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Erm....Its a state funded main-stream school!
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