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Safety Commission To Rule On Safety of Rulers In Science Kits
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has been trying decide for weeks if science kits designed to teach children are safe enough for children to use without vigorous testing. It's not just the chemicals or sharp items in the kits that they are troubled with however. They are also concerned about the dangers of paper clips, magnets, and rulers. From the article: "Science kit makers asked for a testing exemption for the paper clips and other materials. The commission declined to grant them a blanket waiver as part of the guidance the agency approved Wednesday on a 3-2 vote." To be fair, paper clips can cause a lot of damage — just look at what Clippy did to Microsoft Office.
why the poor science education in the United States is such a big problem?
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
It's only a matter of time before the commission realizes that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, bans science kits outright, and starts going after books.
If our kids aren't smart enough to use a ruler without injury, what can we really expect them to learn?
....that the "My First Meth Lab" is probably never going to reach store shelves?
It's clearly irresponsible to expose kids to some rulers; Saddam Hussein, Joseph Stalin and under certain conditions George W Bush
"Windows are for cheaters" - Bruce Springsteen
If rulers are too dangerous for these guys, just stop for a moment and think about how dangerous a keyboard or a mouse could be. It could never happen.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I must say that I find the concerns raised by the Consumer Product Safety Commission to be lacking. They haven't, for example, considered the considerable harms posed by the science kits manual itself. The risk of a paper cut is considerable.
Because where is the fun in that? See, chemistry sets are designed to encourage children to pursue science. If you are just doing it on the computer, why not just play a FPS on the computer? It doesn't teach kids to really explore or to think like a scientist.
The Consumer Product Safety commission should only be concerned about things that are really hazards when used correctly or things that are easily used incorrectly, for example, lead based paint on children's toys, yeah thats a real concern. The fact that some children -might- -possibly- use some materials in a science kit and get hurt is nearly non-existent.
The more we regulate science kits and lose children's natural curiosity in the world around us by essentially telling them that anyplace other than indoors watching TV and doing a bit of exercise on the treadmill is going to kill them, the more we can watch the US slip further and further into the dark ages...
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The only reason we have safe laboratories today is because in the 1970's, science kits killed the careless ones.
Hell, even our playgrounds weeded out the stupid.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Paper clips are great toys/tools. Stop protecting the children from themselves and their inate curiosity and creativity.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Now comes with Science Rock !
* Warning - Science Rock is not for use with actual science.
The federal commission of me agrees: science should be banned in the USA, so should be the last remnants of common sense; any display of individuality and unhealthy interest in any particular subject need to be investigated to establish the safety of such behavior as it relates to the society in total.
Everything must be made not just safe enough, but safe with a huge margin of error so that there is no chance of any accident happening ever at all. Of-course accidents are mostly responsible for a large number of scientific discoveries, so any evidence of scientific discovery must be investigated to isolate the main reason and find out where the safety procedures have failed to prevent such an occurrence to make sure it never happens again.
Have a safe day.
You can't handle the truth.
I have seen Xrays of children that have swallowed magnets - it aint good, and probably could have been prevented yet still allowed children to explore magnetism. magnets are also much stronger and more brittle than they were when I was a kid, the risks have changed and it is responsible to review policy. I don't think anyone wants to stop children learning here and I don't want to buy a science kit for my kid that's full of things that are more dangerous than they need to be.
By all means balance risk against learning benefit, but let there be some balance, not just recklessness to save a penny by not removing the sharp edges on a ruler.
Nullius in verba
For the same reason most people prefer sex with a real partner as opposed to jerking-off to porn?
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
As someone who has played with software based labs, it doesn't compare to the real thing. It's one thing to click on two test tubes and have a thrid change color, but it entirely different to see the color change in real life as you add the reagents.
Science used to be cool because it was exciting. Small explosions, corrosive chemicals, and chemical reactions are cool, clicking some buttons on a computer program to simulate this is lame. If you want kids to like science, it needs to be (somewhat) dangerous. Schools should be encouraging thinking (ie. fire is hot so don't burn yourself, don't drink/touch hydrochloric acid, etc). If a few kids get hurt, well, hopefully they at least learned something, even if that something is that science can be dangerous.
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Can anyone recommend a good science kit with all kinds of things about to be banned? I have a 5 1/2 year old who and we could have a good time with a decent kit. Preferably one with plenty of toxic and/or explosive chemicals and of course some sharp objects, etc.
How about those nasty things called Pencils? You can stab someone with them, I know someone who fell down and stabbed themselves, I still remember the ambulance they called.
You know all of those guys who worked for NASA in the 60s, designing and building the rockets that took us to the moon? Well, they had radioactive sources and Geiger counters in their science kits.
And kids today are going to have to fight to get paper clips and magnets. Sigh.
This is an important point - and I wonder if anyone has every bothered to investigate whether a bit of risky fun early in life is more likely to interest kids in science than teaching them from a rather dull text book. When I was a kid a bunch of us went on a school trip to a nuclear power reactor. When we visited the control room the senior engineer took us to a panel, turned a dial and made us watch as a temperature guage moved upwards - he had moved the control rod up out of the stack. He explained what was going on, we were all facinated, and then said he ought to put it back or the alarms might go off and he might get in trouble. Ok, not a chemistry set, but it highlights how engaging a bit of real world experimentation can be. I can't imagine kids these days could even get close to insides of a reactor, let alone play with control rods. Those were the days...
It's all fun and games until somebody is garroted by a peripheral cable... all the more reason to go wireless I suppose. But then you have hazardous batteries and nutjobs who think that very low power radio transmitters are going to give them cancer. You just can't win.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Just wait 'til you get to the chapter on Darwin and Natural Selection?
Ask a Navy SEAL or your friendly neighborhood secret agent, or Vin "I'm going to kill you with my teacup" Diesel, or even your local role playing gamer: almost anything can be used as a weapon to inflict harm on someone. It follows that almost any object, used improperly, can unintentionally inflict harm. Of course a kid can hurt themselves or others with a paperclip or a ruler; it doesn't take a genius to figure that out! It also shouldn't take a genius to figure out that life, and growing up in particular, is full of risks, and that avoiding those risks is neither realistic, nor is it practical or, in my opinion, particularly desirable! I am saddened and angered by the "pussification of America" by removing all sources of everyday harm and risk, the obsessive "childproofing" of everything around us (often without regard for whether it affects adults or not!), and especially the "helicopter parent" mentality: you're raising your kids to be huge pussies! I also suspect that much of this over-sheltering of children is contributing in a big way to the "quarter-life crisis" phenomenon. Instead of "protecting" children to the point of encasing them in bubblewrap and feeding them intravenously (because they might choke on their pablum), how about we teach them the proper use, and more importantly an appropriate level of respect for potentially dangerous objects and situations, so they'll grow up to be responsible, capable adults? Or is that too radical and "dangerous" a concept anymore?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I think that the issue of kid safety actually is something that stops kids from learning because they are in an environment so pampered that they get completely lost whenever they have to leave home.
Of course kids hurt themselves now and then. It's part of the process, but as long as the injuries aren't permanent then it's experience gained.
But from a tin foil hat perspective it may be that all these "kid safety" issues are put in place just so that they can learn how to be a good consumer and not try to understand how things works.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
This isn't about banning. This is about testing.
When I was a kid, someone had a cheap plastic ruler. He slapped it on my desk to wake me up one day and the damn thing shattered.
What the hell are paper clips doing in a science kit anyway? Is it part of the module on the boring bureaucracy of science?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I believe that to be a rediculous concept. What we should be doing is teaching kids the proper awe and respect for potentially dangerous things, and once they've had that impressed on them, teach them how to handle those things properly.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The Consumer Product Safety commission should only be concerned about things that are really hazards when used correctly or things that are easily used incorrectly, for example, lead based paint on children's toys, yeah thats a real concern. The fact that some children -might- -possibly- use some materials in a science kit and get hurt is nearly non-existent.
Surprise! That is exactly what this is about, but the commission is being stupid. The makers of the science kits are bundling ordinary objects like rulers, paper clips, etc in their kits, and the commission is saying that they have to have a testing regime in place that tests everything that goes into the kits for lead and other toxic chemicals because it is arguably marketed to kids. The solution will be that the kit makers will stop making science kits, even something completely innocuous like "how magnetism works kit", because the burden of testing everything that goes into the kits outweighs the potential profit.
There was a very similar story a while back about low-powered motorcycles marketed to kids that had lead in the ENGINE. The end result looked like it was going to just destroy the market for the product simply on the basis that there was lead in it, regardless of the fact that even if a child disassembled the engine and ate the part in question, it was present in an alloy that would not release the lead into the child's system.
What the story is really about is the committee trying to make their mandate apply to absolutely everything, regardless of whether it had any real chance of causing damage to children.
I agree. Real explosions are fun. Real fire is fun. I still remember the day in 7th grade when we were finally allowed to use bunsen burners. It is in my top 10, despite losing an eyebrow. I think the danger of getting hurt or, in rare cases that probably involve doing something deeply stupid that might well disqualify you from the gene pool, killed are outweighed by just how a) fun and b) useful learning science can be.
And rulers? Rulers? Are you fucking kidding me?
words, words, words, lemur, words, words words
The more we regulate science kits and lose children's natural curiosity in the world around us by essentially telling them that anyplace other than indoors watching TV and doing a bit of exercise on the treadmill is going to kill them, the more we can watch the US slip further and further into the dark ages...
That's what the powers that be want. You think they want us to explore things for ourselves? To LEARN on our own without relying on the government to tell us what is fact and what is fiction? No, they want us to punch in, punch out, then go home and watch TV and be told what's going on.
I have to be the devil's advocate in this case. I don't know the degree of testing that they are recommending be done, but I don't think this is as simple as "OMG someone might poke their eye with a paperclip."
For example...
A cheaply made wooden ruler that, after a small amount of bending, starts splintering in a way that will cause it to easily give people splinters may not be good for children under 12.
Or a plastic ruler that is made out of a material that, instead of simply breaking when bent, shatters and causes sharp shards to fly in all directions (think of bending a CD until it breaks) may not be good for children under 12.
Or even a paperclip that breaks easily leaving sharp edges or contains unsafe amounts of toxic metals may not be good for children under 12.
My guess is that reasons like these are why they don't relax the guidelines.
And just how is software going to help you learn what hydrogen sulphide smells like?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
But it shouldn't be part of the testing. By childrens toy I mean something that you give to two year olds, something like a pacifier or the like, not a toy intended for kids older than the "lets eat random crap" stage.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I have a wonderful book from the 60s, "700 Science Experiments for Everyone", originally published as "UNESCO Source Book for Science Teaching." It was wonderful gems like "How to Make an Electric Toaster" ("Your problem is to find a convenient was to mount 5 metres (no less!) of nichrome wire in a space no larger than a slide of bread."), and cutting apart old torch batteries to get the carbon rods to make an arc light, connected directly to the mains via a rheostat made from wire-wound rocks immersed in salt water. Not to mention DIY test tubes, alcohol lamps, etc.
Or, you can grow up to be a lawyer, or someone who scrubs toilets for lawyers.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
They didn't treat us with kid gloves, we were supposed to be midget scientists, not young hooligans. They kept us in order by making anyone who screwed up too much sit out the year (no more practicals, they could just observe). We took liberties, but not *too* many[*].
:). Eventually it dries, falls off the table, goes 'BANG!' and throws fragments of itself all over the place. Of course, those bits dried faster, and they were all over the floor. Pretty soon, walking anywhere in the pavilion would set off more bangs as the stuff exploded underfoot. Then the headmaster walked in. We made ourselves scarce just in time. He wasn't amused :)
Of course, this was in the UK, not the USA. I can't vouch for how they treated kids over here - there's probably a whole bunch of stuff we did that's more dangerous than *rulers* too, but that was just off-the-top-of-my-head...
[*] Gun-cotton (basically cotton soaked in Nitric acid to form nitrocellulose) is pretty stable when it's wet, but when it dries out, small amounts of friction can set it off. We took a whole load of it to the pavilion on the yearly school sports-day, and forgot about it (we were playing Runequest in-between competing, I had shot-putt that day
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
With many people, that's not a conclusion, its a fundamental, axiomatic assumption. Or, put another way, an article of faith.
We are over-regulated on the wrong things and under-regulated on the vital things. The nanny state fosters dependency on others to make critical judgments for us so that all th consumer need worry about is buying, buying, buying instead of thinking for themselves about a product. Meanwhile, banks destroy the economy and BP destroys the Gulf region because of lack of preventive oversight.
I say we're so out of balance we're headed to be a footnote in the history books. "The US, an experiment in democracy that failed due to growing beyond the scale where it could be managed properly."
As someone who has played with software based labs, it doesn't compare to the real thing. It's one thing to click on two test tubes and have a thrid change color, but it entirely different to see the color change in real life as you add the reagents.
Bingo. The same thing happens in astronomy, too. This summer I saw Saturn and its rings for the first time with my own eyes (well, through a telescope). It was a small white ball with thin bulges on the side, and yet that filled me with far more profound awe than all the high-res, full-colour pictures from the Voyager probes I've seen before.
Sad, but true. This is the same agency that nearly killed the sub-250cc motorcycle market because most of bikes (and ATVs as well) with engines that small are meant for kids to learn on. Yes, adults do occasionally ride 150-cc dirtbikes, but kids are the target user.
Why was this market nearly killed? The CPSC was afraid of kids licking the battery terminals and sucking on lead wheel-balancing weights. Never mind that kids can't really swallow these things, or that these parts won't poison you even if swallowed. They have lead, and lead is bad. The CPSC doesn't care to look any further than that.
"osake no hou ga, biiru yori ii" to omotteiru.
F*cking Rulers, How Do They Work?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
The Safety Commission should be more concerned about what the junk on Disney Channel, MTV and others is teaching out kids than whether or not a freaking ruler might be dangerous.
The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA) was pretty much knee-jerk reaction to some high-profile toy recalls that occurred in 2007 and 2008. While better standards were needed to protect children, many felt that this act went too far, too quickly and was even too vague for its own good.
The law requires that every batch of every product be tested by a third party for lead and phthalates (which can add up to be very expensive). This means that every time new plastic comes in for a new batch of rulers or they bring in some new paint, or even the metal strip in the ruler, all need to be tested for lead and phthalates. Even if nothing has changed since the last batch.
This law drove many companies out of business and nearly shuttered hundreds more before a last minute extension/clarifications were made early in 2009, I believe. Even some European companies (where the testing is more stringent) stopped importing their toys into the US with the new, higher cost as the reason. I'm not sure if this part has been cleared up or not, but the law also included local craftspeople who carve wooden toys or sew bibs (each piece of pine and each bolt of fabric would have to have been tested for lead and phthalates)
I work in a small, locally owned toy store and before the law science kits have already become much more simple (and boring in my opinion) since I was a kid. I assume this is due to companies concerned about litigation from parents who give a kit designed for a 10-year-old to their "really advanced" 5-year-old. We have discovered that 90% of kids are "advanced for their age" or at least that's what is said about the children when they are being shopped for.
Without granting exceptions to certain components of science kits (and perhaps a few other "toys") they will become even more simple and America will fall further behind the rest of the world in science and math proficiency.
Just to play devil's advocate here: what amounts to reasonable precautions is a function of scale, because you can amortize the cost of each expected injury over a larger number of units shipped.
As a thought experiment, suppose Miss Jones the science teacher puts together a science experiment kit for each of her 30 students. A representative kit is then sent to a safety engineering firm, which charges $10K to conclude there is a 0.2% chance of injury from the ruler, and that this could be reduced to 0.1% by using a slightly different ruler.
Now it almost certain that nobody is gong to be hurt by the offending ruler, and the engineering investment of $10K prevents an expected 0.03 injuries. That's over $300,000 per injury averted. That makes no economic sense unless the injury is horrific (e.g. requires lifetime institutionalization).
Now suppose JonesCo puts together a similar kit, and expects to ship 30 thousand units. In that case, it is almost *certain* that somebody is going to get hurt, although any *individual's* chance is quite small. The expected number of injuries saved by the engineering study is now 30. Amortizing the $10K study costs over 30 injuries means that you've spent just over 300 per injury saved. This is not quite justifiable for things like paper cuts of course, but an emergency room visit probably costs more than that.
So: the costs involved with a safety review may or may not be justifiable depending on the number of units that will be shipped.
In either case, the safety of the pre-study and post-study kits are practically indistinguishable. As a parent, I wouldn't freak out if the Miss Jones kit was used in place of the JonesCo kit, because we are talking about very, very rare accidents. But those freak accidents *do* happen and are worth considering *collectively*. I say this as a parent who has taken a toddler to the emergency room for an injury at preschool who sent that child right back to the same school the next day with the heart shaped bead he'd shoved up into his sinuses in his pocket.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You are exactly right. We moved a couple of years ago and the quality of the local school was the biggest single factor in deciding where we would live. We bought a low end home in a high end neighborhood and the public school is absolutely fantastic. New building, all new equipment, an abundance of parent volunteers, and fund raisers that raise crazy amounts of money for the schools. The maximum class size is 21 kids. The school has fully funded art, theater arts and music programs.
The downside is high property taxes. More than $600 / month on a $250k house. I think it's worth it though. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I've found I really enjoy living in the suburbs.
The law about testing everything for sale to a children under 13 is totally inflexible. Much of the testing is pointless. It is horrendously expensive, and the testing labs are hugely backed up. I've seen this from the viewpoint of an embedded developer -- one of the products I worked on never made it to market because the client had to divert the tooling budget to pay for lab testing of old products. Then they chopped bunches of sku's out of their product line because the cost of testing didn't pencil out. Later, they had to sell the company.
Look, 10 year old kids don't eat the motors from their slot cars. 4 year old kids don't gnaw on their night lights. Does it matter if the streamers on a kids bicycle contain phthalates? This madness has to stop. The law is inflexible and idiotic and is doing many millions of dollars of economic harm, killing excellent products like the science kits mentioned in the article, and has very little benefit.
There need to be safety standards, sure. But the law as currently formulated is the most insane piece of work to come from our government bureaucracy in decades.
Having taught English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) to American exchange students - yes, their standard of reading and writing was low enough to put them into a class aimed at people who understand no English at all - I can safely say that the privately educated ones have the lowest standard of education. People who have been privately educated in the US seem to be good at sports and have bits and pieces of "rote" learning, but cannot effectively use language because they simply haven't been taught how.
If you paid for your child to have a private education in a US school, I hope you're not too upset to learn that when they reach university they will be able to read, write and speak English about as well as an average British 11-year-old.
Okay, I'm wandering way off-topic, but my karma can take it.....
I'm sick of the metric superiority thing. Yes, metric is more rational, and a nicer system. I'd love to see it become the standard everyday system of measurement in the U.S., but really the way some people go on about measurements you'd think that the metric system was TRUTH and everything else was the equivalent of Young Earth Creationism or Geocentrism.
Think about the following:
We use Euros, you use Dollars, you're backwards and we're not.
We use the Latin alphabet, you use Cyrillic, you're backwards and we're not.
We speak German, you speak Norwegian, you're backwards and we're not.
We pronounce the letter 'Z' as Zee, and you pronounce it as Zed, you're backwards, and we're not.
We use centimeters, you use inches, you're backwards and we're not.
Now, all of those are roughly on par, but aside from the last example, they're all pretty silly sounding. Yet the metric one is pretty commonly seen, which just strikes me as a little silly for something that technically has no "right" answer. Whatever you use is fine, be happy with it, who cares?
I know camperdave was probably just going for a quick throwaway joke, but the "Informative" mod got me thinking.....
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
An anecdote my father tells...
Where he worked, there was a safety awareness/training program. As an award, for finishing the program, or for having a good safety record, was a pocket knife. Nearly every person who got one of these knives cut himself with it soon afterward. ...Except my father, who had been shown how (and why) to handle knives safely when he was very young.
One of my lasting memories is of my father showing me why "sticking your fingers in a fan is a bad idea" by using a small metal fan to totally destroy a carrot. You can't tell me that hands-on experience should not be given at a young age. The problem comes when the parents don't have the proper experience either. They fear the risk because they don't know it, and pass it on to their children.
Found this location. No logins or accounts required.
When I was a kid: Erector Sets had many choking hazard screws and metal pieces with unfinished razor sharp edges. Chemistry sets had actual chemicals in them. And I mixed them ALL together. And put electrodes in the goop and plugged it in the wall. A microscope kit came with xylene and actual glass slides etc. I set off rockets in the basement. I hooked all the transformers my dad had end to end to try to make a million volts. I took my prescription for potassium iodide to school and was called to the principal's office because some kid said I threw "acid" at him. I threw nothing at anyone. I made free iodine from my medicine by mixing it with acetic acid. Cool purple clouds!!! I made balsa airplanes using sharp razor blades and toxic glue. The rubber powered ones flew so high they looked like tiny dots in the sky. I made model cars with working suspension and purple metalflake paint jobs. I made a Battling Betsy tank with TWO electric motors that was nosebleed fast. Count me in for the Visible V8 and the Visible Radial Airplane Engine. AND IT WAS ALL GREAT!!!!! I am alive and well and have all my fingers and toes. Today I hear people are worried about paperclips and rulers being dangerous and chemistry is reduced to baking soda and vinegar. This is pitiful and sad.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Come on. Who else here remembers when chemistry sets gave you truly dangerous stuff to work with? Not just toxic stuff, not just stuff that could make rapid oxidizers... who here ever had a chemistry set that came with a spinthariscope and a radium source? (Or the really old ones that had a shard of Uranium?)
The closest thing to this I've ever had was a broken Luminous Dial watch. The most dangerous thing I ever had in a chemistry set was a sample of Mercury. That was fun and is hopefully the reason I'm insane today.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
As someone with a lot of knowledge about regulatory requirements and conformity testing, I can say without a doubt the CPSC is on the right track here.
The industry's response is all posturing. Testing the metal edges in a ruler for harmful chemicals such as lead is very easy to do, and really not very expensive. Traceability of the raw materials to a source heat lot is essentially free. A single heat lot could produce tens of thousands of rulers, so a single metallurgical test may add a penny or two for a whole lot. There exist many standards for the plastic itself with regards to flame resistance and plastics testing but there is no national standard that I'm aware of regarding plastics toxicity and what is an acceptable level of lead and mercury.
If indeed the companies discontinue the kits because of the safety testing requirements, then that is basically an admission that they were never doing the safety testing of their own volition to begin with. I'm not even going to make up some bullshit "it's for the kids" argument. Fact is, citizens expect that the products companies sell are safe, whether they be for kids, adults or even pets. Kids may be the first to draw attention where a lack of safety testing exists, but we should all be demanding safer products for ourselves.
Instead of resisting this, they should be taking the opportunity to give themselves market differentiation by voluntarily starting safety testing.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Did they keep misspelling colour and centre and have trouble locating the boot of a car?
Exactly! I think using real chemicals encourages kids to pay closer attention as well. If you're using a computer, what difference does it make if you screw something up? You can just keep clicking around until you get it right. Using real (i.e. limited) materials encourages you to critically think about what's happened, why things worked/didn't work rather than just blindly trying each possible solution until one works.
Our relentless pursuit of 'safety' will result in an entire generation of morons.
If one wants to learn, what is needed is proper instruction and access to materials, not new legislation.
I grew up outside the US. When I was little it was not uncommon to hear people making fun of safety label of products coming from the US. I used to wonder what kind of people need a warning saying 'do not chew the electric cord' on an electric heater, or a label saying 'do not place your hand inside while operating' on a food processor. By limiting access to learning kits and putting more responsibility on the government than on the parents and teachers, we are shooting ourselves in the foot, and the upcoming generations in the head. You cannot educate using fear. Let the little kids alone. Chances are they will not kill themselves using a ruler.
When I was a kid, I made gunpowder by:
- grinding up sulfur candles purchased from the local store
- making charcoal by charring wood on a small fire outside
- making saltpeter from cow manure from local fields
So get your kid a book like:
http://www.amazon.com/Do---Yourself-Gunpowder-Cookbook/dp/0873646754/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285872731&sr=1-1
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I'm afraid that the contradiction between your stated position and your sig just made my head esplode.
If these companies stop manufacturing the kits, it doesn't mean that they're the evil suxors, it means that they don't think that they can do the testing and make a profit. The first rule of understanding capitalism is: Don't ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by economic motives.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Oh good fucking grief.
The CPSC are a bunch of idiots. And you are right with them, that's for sure.
It used to be that our kids could get actually USEFUL science kits. Ones that would let them build things, try out different experiments, and yes, occasionally make something that smelled bad, or smoked, made a small bang. And we used to say one simple thing about them: parents, don't let your kid play with the kit unsupervised.
Now, of course, thanks to a generation of deadbeat fucking morons who think that kids raise themselves, we are instead stuck in a world where anything that could possibly be dangerous for kids is off-limits. Small wonder most American kids grow up today with their faces in front of the TV, either watching brain-rotting crap or playing repetitive, non-inspiring video games that should come with a warning "imagination not required" on the side, and getting fatter every day from it.
Instead of having the kids run around the world, try things, learn, and get the occasional scraped knee or other injury, now it's nothing but "OMG don't let the kids outside it might be DANGEROUS out there!"
While we're busy "thinking of the children", their brains are rotting away. Way to go, parents.
Euros and dollars don't have stupid orders of magnitude , you have either one euro/dollar or cents (in both cases 1/100)
Latin and Cyrillic , just different symbols , same as the euro/dollar thing , just different names , you don't add letters either.
German vs Norwegian , language , well ok this one might be _slightly_ comparable to the issue at hand , one has to be a little more rantional than the other.
Zed and Zee , again , just an aesthetic issue.
Inches vs centimeters 1 m = 100 cm , 1 Foot = 12 inches. Now quickly tell me how many inches does it take to span 892360213452 feet cause i can just add two zeros at the end to do the conversion in metric.
If one foot was some arbitrary scale of a meter and it would be equal to 10 inches i would have no problem with it and would've cheerfully agreed with your analogies , but it is not.
When I was a kid - fifty years ago - I ran around with a lead bar in my pocket. I used to hold it in my fist (no, not violent) and squeeze it, because... well, because I could. That bar eventually changed shape until it fit my hand. I held that thing in my hot, sweaty palms for must have been hundreds of hours. I also held pools of mercury, double handfuls, we used to play with it; I had a huge jar that I got from an old furnace warehouse. I never tried to drink it, or eat the lead. I'm cancer free (actually, I was born with a tumor they removed, and none since then), relatively healthy except where I've broken things myself, and still smarter than any of these idiots who want to restrict everything in sight from everyone in order that they are (cough) safer. I swam and tubed in the Delaware river, unsupervised. Across it, for hours in the rapids, in still pools and from the surface to about 20 feet deep. I went caving. Deep caving. I went cliff climbing. We camped in the woods. One time, a friend, about my age, 13 or so, we got a in boat and floated down the Delaware for about a week. Holy crap was that fun. I had a chemistry set; my sister a biology set, complete with a truly awesome microscope (our dad was an SF writer with a degree in biology... he gave cool gifts from time to time.) She would get water from stagnant ponds, while I enjoyed separating H from O and enhancing various combustion events with the resulting O. My friend Mark and I used to stand at the head of the NY subway trains (this was about 6th grade) and ride them -- all day. That'd turn a token into a huge entertainment permit. We hung out at the museum of natural history. I have some great stories about that. We'd go out to Coney Island and swim. We hiked in the woods. We biked between small towns down the side of the highway. We became musicians. We drove fast (for the times) cars; I had a roadrunner and an awesome GTO. We got laid. A lot. There was a pirate radio station. Concerts. Woodstock. We drank. We did drugs. I got caught, and suffered a year of incarceration with violent, nasty kids from Philly; so I learned to fight in order to not be beaten bloody every night. Check it out... the first really bad thing to happen to me, and what caused it, supervised it, created the framework for it? It was the bloody GOVERNMENT, that's what... trying to "help." Wankers.
When I read that some... unprintable idiot... wants to keep rulers - RULERS - out of chemistry kits, because they're "potentially dangerous", it just makes me want to beat them about the head and shoulders with a wet noodle. What useless, pandering, socially destructive and chickenshit human beings these people are. I pity, really honestly pity, the kids of today, living in their figurative rubber suits with attached life preservers, GPS tags, and pocket treatise on the evils of anything that even remotely might be fun.
Here's a story for you. My mother - generally open minded, but a bit protective - took me to the hobby store in Port Jervis one time, and I expressed a wish for this huge, multi-door folded-in-on-itself-like-a-tesseract (or so it seemed to me) chemistry set. She looked at it, and told me, "no, it says it's not safe for your age group." Or something very much like that, I guess I don't remember the wording anymore. Anyway, I had a small "safe" set. So I made her a bet. I said if I could show her that the little set I had wasn't "safe", would she let me have the big set? She agreed.
So the next day, I showed up in her room (ground level on a hill), crossed my arms, and waited. Downstairs, some iron filings, Oxygen, and hydrogen reached "bang" when the glass vessels over the little alcohol burner collapsed and broke, and all of the basement windows blew out with a huge roar. I still remember the dust motes blown out of the cracks between the floorboards of my mom's bedroom dancing in the sunlight from the window.
She took me right over to get the big set. Then she made me mow the lawn all summer to pay for the windows.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That made my day. I work in a highly regulated industry, and buying anything with the right standards conformance paperwork costs many times the standard cost, even when we get exactly the same item that is sold to ordinary consumers for the fraction of the price. You want a small batch with special paperwork from a large supplier? Be prepared to pay a ridiculous amount of money. A normal certificate of conformity usually lists only the absolutely minimal amount of safety claims, both to reduce liability and to force those who need more to pay up for it. Since I suspect science kit makers are not exactly thriving these days, this is the kind of thing that would put them out of business. It would probably be cheaper for them to set up a testing and validation framework for off-the-shelf products, but depending on the standards they have to conform to, they may not be allowed to go that route.