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Curiosity Rewarded: Florida Teen Heading to Space Camp, Not Jail
Kiera Wilmot, the Florida high school student who was expelled from her school after an unauthorized science experiment was misperceived as a weapon (at least for purposes of arrest and charging), won't be going to jail. She will, though, be going to Space Camp, thanks to a crowdfunding campaign started by author and former NASA engineer Homer Hickham. All charges against her have been dropped.
It scares me shitless that my kindergartner could be kicked out of school for folding his hands and saying bang in this insane and litigious age.
Then I should have my own Moon base considering the "experiments" I did at that age!
amazing news, congrats for the kid.
I'll ask him to say hello and give our good wishes. October Sky is one of our favourite films and let's hope Kiera does as well as Homer Hickam did despite his early escapades.
I'm glad to see that at least some people have morals. Wanting to experiment with science and NOT hurting anyone in the process shouldn't be met by being kicked out of school, she's getting what she deserves.
In my high school chemistry class, we made gunpowder (which someone accidentally shattered a mortar and pestle with) and hydrogen mini-rockets (we filled ours with butane and put a hole in the ceiling tiles) and that was called a chapter in the book, not a crime. Though unlike the media, I think the difference isn't that I'm white, it's that that school district and police department is full of complete morons.
It gives me a warm glow that things worked out this way.
Now if the warden of a local maximum security prison were to start a crowd-funding campaign, I'd be willing to sponsor a short stay in jail for those that brought charges against this curious schoolgirl.
Requiem for the American Dream
I believe rules are rules and you break them, you should be punished, not rewarded. In this case, thanks the publicity, she is greatly benefitting from breaking the rules.
Congratulations, you are exactly what is wrong with the world. Rules are made for people, they are not sacred.
Because fear of jail time, hassle from overly-aggressive authority figures, being expelled, and being publicly embarrassed wasn't really a punishment at all?
I've always had a high respect for Mr. Hickam, and I'm really glad to hear this is happening. Couple this with the viral video of the kid who told off his world history teacher, and you've the makings of a rebellion against the factory-style approach that politicians are foisting upon public education.
This could get interesting, and for the better.
Why is it so obvious that you should be punished for for breaking a rule? Just actiling like a robot and punishing her clearly wouldn't have made anything better for anyone, cerainly not for her.
When does following the rules pay off?
Yup, even though you are hiding behind being an A.C., those are pretty much my thoughts too, although you forgot to mention to call it an "experiment" rather that a risk to the safety of others.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I donated to one of the funds for her.
Eat your heart out, shithead.
What's wrong with the world? Really? As much as I love to fly in the face of authority, I still think rules serve a purpose in society. I broke plenty of rules as a young'n, but I managed to not get caught. If I did get caught, I didn't expect to be sent to camp. She's curious, and that should be encouraged. She blatantly broke rules and got caught, that should be punished. There is a happy medium somewhere between prison and all-expense-paid vacation. Rewarding this girl for breaking rules will only drive her to a life of politics.
I believe rules are rules and you break them, you should be punished
You know she's still expelled, right? Space Camp is a consolation prize.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
You must be from Europe or some shit region. This is America and rules were made broken. Sorry you are so jealous.
Einstein broke Newton's rules. Is that bad?
"I believe rules are rules and you break them, you should be punished, not rewarded." - Congratulations, you have met the requirements for German citizenship.
Her being punished for an "unauthorised" science experiment will tend to discourage curiosity and scientific inquiry in other children. This is bad for America. By rewarding her we encourage curiosity and scientific inquiry, which is good for America.
We could even get away from the mindless "zero tolerance" crap and maybe send a nuanced message. Send her to Space Camp, but have her write a paper on the risks of experimenting with homemade explosives and what safety measures she should have taken, but didn't and how it could be done more safely next time.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
The difference between now and then is that the business of government is twice as large. The larger the government, the more "crimes" per year, the more "criminals" per population, and the more "justification" for the next expansion of power and revenue.
What she made wasn't really a science experiment; it was a "bottle bomb" consisting of mixing tinfoil and Drano in a Coke bottle. These explosives are well-known among schoolyard pranksters and can cause serious injury (chemical burns, loss of fingers, etc.)
It's not politically correct to say, but if she was cooking one of these up on school property with her friends without teacher oversight, she should have been punished. As long as she didn't actually hurt anyone, though, it should have amounted into a few days' detention at worst.
That said, I'm happy she's going to space camp and that this sort of mischief might develop into a real interest in science.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
I'm glad I grew up when I did.. if I even did 1/3 of the crap today that I did back in my childhood, I wouldn't be in federal prison, I'd be in Guantanamo... Everything from making real IED's (not bottle cap explosions / minor pipebombs.. but real explosives), to self-learning the practices of SERE.. it would have been portrayed that I was being taught by a terrorist network.
In the bid for ratings, the media conglomorate keeps sensationlizing the bad stuff, instilling fear into the majority of the American public, while giving a reason to the lunatics of today to go "shoot up a school" for their 5 minutes of fame. This in turns leads to almost no resistance for the government to, one the minor spectrum, bend our rights, and on the other end of the spectrum, do away with them altogether, while we, the American public, agree with what they're doing since it "protects" us.
Looking back, I'm kinda glad that I learned what I did, when I did, if I ever need to use it again - should the unthinkable happen (ie: Police state).
He performed countless experiments throughout his high school days most of which were dangerous but he never gave up.
He eventually graduated high school and went on to Virgina Tech and got a BS in Industrial engineering.
He then went into the military and got into NASA and I'm sure I'm missing things in between.
The point is, after seeing who elected to send her to space camp, the reasons become clear and make sense.
Homer Hickam
Whenever a player quits EVE to go play WoW, the Average IQ of both games increase.
So it is ok to reward people that don't get caught?
The charges were dropped but she didn't get rewarded by the authorities, the crowd funding project rewarded here, which is funded by 'people'. The same people that might have been on the jury during her day in court, which might also have said 'not guilty' considering all the circumstances.
Rules are not set in stone, rules have to be able to be criticized and changed according to the circumstances. Just because a single rule was broken it doesn't justify a punishment that is out of the ordinary. She was charged with a felony, which is not a trivial offense.
It's time we started making very loud and angry noises about zero tolerance being utterly unacceptable[1]. Students need the freedom to screw up in the pursuit of fooling around with some learning.
Things need to be exploded, burnt, and launched. Children need to have the freedom to throw balls at each other, wrestle, and do other dangerous things. Criminalizing mistakes and foolishness is as near fascist behavior as I have ever heard.
Tomfoolery for all, everywhere!
[1] Don't make a false equivalency between things that look scary and acts that are harmful.
Comma much?
It was once a rule that blacks couldn't drink from white water fountains. You seriously think a black man should be punished for getting a god damned drink? The bad example here is your response, implying that the system is perfect and that if everyone just followed the rules we'd have a perfect world. It don't work that way sister.
In fact if you look around the business world, the wealthiest people on the planet got their place in history by breaking the rules. From Apple's IP theft from Xerox of the mouse and GUI to Wallstreet's billion dollar golden parachutes, rules were made to be broken.
It's no surprise that the people making the rules tend to be the worst offenders, case in point, all three of the most recent US presidents have admitted to drug use at some time in their lives, from Clinton's "tried marijuana but did not inhale" to G.W.Bush's cocaine conviction to Obama's "enthusiastic" use of marijuana and cocaine in his college days as admitted in his 1995 book Dreams from my Father.
I fail to see how this frame proves it rob ford, lots of fat blond men look like him.
I think your confusing punishment with rehabilitation. This is a child that had bad judgement. She got her punishment, she got arrested, she got expelled, and she got charged with a felony. For a child those are all major. But on the other side she has been given a chance to push her energies into an area where she will not be endangering or causing heart attacks for school administrators. With children it is always better to drive the energy in the direction you want rather than straight up stop it.
If you want to see Homer Hickam's story, you can watch the excellent movie October Sky. In the movie, they definitely accidentally blow some stuff up while inventing rockets. And they got in trouble, but they didn't get expelled, jailed and have their lives ruined.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Are you sure she was the party exhibiting bad judgement? I'm not. I'm of the opinion the "authorities" in this case were the ones guilty if poor judgement.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
I direct your attention to the AC comment currently below yours:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3779175&cid=43804491
He has a much firmer grasp on reasonable in my opinion.
Why can nobody understand the subtle, intricate differences between punishment and reward? She was playing with dangerous chemical reactions in the parking lot of her school. What part of that should be rewarded?
I'm all for sending a science-curious young girl to space camp. We should encourage children to experiment. We should also make sure children know they shouldn't carry out dangerous experiments without proper precautions. What if she blinded herself and an handful of classmates? Seems that should be discouraged. In fact, maybe it should even make it against the rules.
I just said she should be punished. Y'know, a stern talking to, maybe detention. Adult felony charges would be overkill. However, just because I think the prosecution is severely overreacting, doesn't mean I should retaliate by severely under-reacting. Doing so compromises your own ideals and might even make you a strawman for the opposition.
Exactly! This is why Homer stepped in in this case. This kid probably reminded him of himself when he was that age. And he knows better than most that in this case what she needed was support not expulsion.
Whenever a player quits EVE to go play WoW, the Average IQ of both games increase.
This. Fazig is no better than the people who sicced the cops on this girl.
"I believe rules are rules and you break them, you should be punished, not rewarded." - Congratulations, you have met the requirements for German citizenship.
I was going to say "you must be a Good German", but it amounts to the same thing.
have her write a paper on the risks of experimenting with homemade explosives and what safety measures she should have taken, but didn't and how it could be done more safely next time
And maybe a week's suspension of something. What the OP overlooks is that what people object to is not her being punished for doing something stupid and potentially dangerous, but the absurd severity of the threatened punishment. Arrest, felony charges, WTF? What the "authorities" put her through is a far greater crime than anything she did.
Punishment, lecturing, reward - the differences sometimes are really subtle.
When she is "forced" to learn about scientific methods at the Space Camp, it could be considered some kind of punishment, it would be similar to detention. An expensive form of detention, but since people pay with their spare money and not everyone paid through their taxes I don't see a problem.
No, I'm saying she should get a fitting punishment rather than a sugar-coated felony. Getting the charges dropped is awesome, and along with an apology and policy reform, should have been the end of the story.
Rather than felony charges and spacecamp, two opposing, exaggerated reactions trying to cancel each other out; how about detention, a reasonable, fitting punishment. Instead of greeting friends with a kiss on the lips and a kick in the balls, why not just shake hands.
...eat his hat for this! He must be turning red in his face like a ripe tomato.
Liquid nitrogen will do the same thing.
As an intern at NASA Ames during summer break, I thought it would be fun to do a little experiment on the expansion of gas inside a contained vessel. So I put a small amount of LN2 into a 2-liter cola bottle and set it in an unoccupied back parking lot surrounded by 3-story, nearly windowless buildings. As the LN2 changes to gaseous form, the bottle began to expand, almost in-noticeably. After a minute or two, the glued on, wrap around label snapped off, and few seconds later, I heard one of the loudest bangs that I have ever heard in my life.
Before I knew what was happening, we were surrounded by MPs. But before the situation got out of hand, my Senior Researcher came out of the building to explain to the worried guards that this was merely a case of an ignorant intern forgetting to remove the cap before disposing of the harmless liquid. There were some stern looks, but that was the end of it. Unsurprisingly, I was not charged with a felony.
Lesson learned: don't blow up things on NASA bases. I think I can live with that.
Note that this is Polk County, Florida. Out there they believe the earth is 6000 years old and that The Flintstones was a documentary.
(I live one jurisdiction West, in Manatee County. We win't brilliant here, but most of us understand evolution and stuff like that.)
I'd wager that you're both right. One need not exclude the other.
You know who else liked to experiment?
Mengele!
When Mentos are outlawed, only outlaws will have Mentos...
the FreshMaker
If it's a bad rule, get rid of the rule. This isn't a bad rule. Kids shouldn't be mixing caustic chemicals in their school parking lot. Experimenting is encouraged, but proper precautions are prerequisite. This isn't a case of civil disobedience.
I'm glad you acknowledge that the system is broken. Upon that realization, I would prefer you take to fixing the system rather than accepting it as broken and praising those who've exploited it most successfully.
I did not mean to say to insinuate it was unexpected. Children are children and bad judgement should be expected. What she did is to be expected of a child. The bad judgement is that it is not usually safe to be mixing chemicals with out a guardian in the area to oversee and I have no doubt she learned this lesson. I see the over reaction from the school administrator to be the whole problem. Instead of asking the child to not do experiments outside of the classroom (From the sounds of it the child had never caused any problems before) he went around the screaming the sky is falling. The kid popped a bottle get over it. Chastise and move on.
So a gross miscarriage of justice is averted. Now it's time to sack all those involved.
And while we are at it the same penalty should be administered to those who involved in charging Kaitlyn Hunt with two felony counts for having consensual lesbian sex with her high school mate.
What is it about Florida anyway?
You can find him at www.homerhickam.com
And Germany is known for its lack of scientific innovation...
The rocket pioneers were always one step ahead of the cops.
I know I was.
I lived very near Kennedy Airport (Rosedale Queens NY), and used to shoot Estes rockets at the airplanes!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Although it's never happened before, theoretically a white civil rights group could exist and be an actual non-racist civil rights group rather than just another thinly veiled hate group.
It would just be the most unnecessary and probably idle civil rights group that ever existed.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
BTW - October Sky is an anagram for "Rocket Boys".
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Scientific exploration has always, throughout human history, mostly been driven by simple human curiosity and willingness to try new things. Sometimes it ends badly, sometimes as in a couple of shuttle flights, heroes perish, but what's the alternative? Condemning ourselves to boring, unimproved existences where nothing ever changes.
Our society should thrive upon, celebrate, and foster that sense of brave, creative curiosity. Not punish it.
I believe rules are rules and you break them, you should be punished, not rewarded.
You need to keep in mind that the rules and the punishments for breaking those rules were designed most likely with the goal of the school district and its administrators evading as much responsibility as possible. A rule which has a punishment appropriate to the infraction requires considerable judgment from the enforcer of the rules. Zero tolerance policies, such as the one that this student ran afoul of, don't.
And Germany is known for its lack of scientific innovation...
During the Nazi era it was. While engineering for weapons continued apace (rockets, jet engines) their scientific work largely died. The Nazis decimated the educational system of which the Germans had been so justifiably proud, substituting indoctrination for education. When asked what he thought of the universities after the Jews had been purged from them, the eminent elderly mathematician David Hilbert basically said "what universities"?
I don't agree with your "rules are rules" take on existence, but I do agree with you that it's a travesty she is being rewarded for this. She should not have been criminally charged, but expulsion, I think, was completely reasonable. Any way you slice it, she built a bomb and set it off at school. Period. Best case, she's an idiot for not thoroughly researching the outcome of an uncontrolled chemical reaction that she's only heard about in passing; worst case, she was fully aware of the potential outcome due to the numerous videos available that completely demonstrate what happens, and didn't care. Either way, she deserves to be punished, not rewarded.
Only if Newton sues him, or lobbies for stricter experimentation in government funded research.
I am German and I lived and worked in the US for 7 years, also traveled all over the place from Alaska to Key West, Maine to Hawaii.
I soon found out, much to my surprise, that Germany is MUCH less concerned about rules than the US. It is also much more individualistic. Also, in the US the climate is much more "respect uniforms" than in Germany. It seems the two countries reversed roles after WWII.
That said, Americans are much more polite, they respect parents and children (in Germany trying to get rid of a "noisy kindergarten" in the neighborhood is not uncommon, or finding that other customers in restaurants get infuriated even by NORMAL children behavior, I'm not talking about out of control children), I can occasionally have conversations in web forums with people I 100% disagree with (in Germany it's 99% a shouting match without any conversation - yes, WORSE than Dems/Reps). Lots of good and bad on both sides. I liked living in the US, I like living in Germany - I would probably like it in any other place (if good food and a mostly intact environment are available).
Yes, German pedestrians DO wait for green light on a road in the middle of nowhere at 5am, no car to be heard or seen for miles (no joke, I've seen it repeatedly). However, in cases such as the one discussed here and in other more important areas they are much less likely to quietly accept authority. Also, they are less impressed by uniforms and police than Americans. That's just how it is, whether or not that's good or bad depends on the concrete circumstances.
This is not to say that I think this teenager committed a crime, personally I do not. When I went to school, there was Detention and then there was the big all day on Saturday detention. Personally I don't think this young lady should have been expelled, or even suspended. Two full all day detentions where she has to clean toilets, bathrooms, desks, buses, etc... would have sufficed.
Certainly, after that incident the school should have made an announcement that the situation was not considered acceptable without permission / supervision from a chemistry teacher. And then any future situations of a similar nature would result in a x #no of day(s) suspension. And a repeat offender, expulsion.
This would encourage students to be curious and cautious by approaching the appropriate teacher and getting guidance and permission.
School is for curiosity and learning. Students make mistakes but it shouldn't stay with them for the rest of their academic lives.
Hell if a teenager kills someone, their name is usually kept from the papers, they go to juvenile detention and their records are sealed at 18. This one young lady experiments with some chemical house hold items and she's persecuted across America by those who insist on zero tolerance.
Folks, I don't want to see people get hurt unnecessarily, but we learn from our mistakes, let us make them without persecution forever.
Zero-tolerance is the destruction of basic human nature and most of all COMMON SENSE. Every situation is different, Every student is different, treat them differently.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
The rule may be ok but the implementation of the rule is bad. Ie, maximum penalty always applied with no exceptions whatsoever. The real life legal system isn't even that harsh. If you make a mistake then you learn from the mistake and move on, and if it's a simple mistake you shouldn't be ruined because of it. Some education should happen in the schools, it should not be something that's delayed until after graduation.
Getting close the 30 years ago, my friends and I got sprung pocketing magnesium strips from the High School lab. Punishment? The chem teacher walked away, wordlessly, then came back with a coil of tungsten wire, dropped it on the bench muttering quietly something about "applying enough voltage to ingite".
Not one of us turned into terrorists. But three out of four became engineers (me the only abstainer).
The charges were NOT dropped. She signed a diversion plan with the courts, which requires pleading guilty and establishing a probation routine. There are hefty monthly fees for this process and missing even one of them is grounds for ending up back in court to face the criminal charges directly. There are numerous other ways that the probationary agreement can be "violated" --drug testing the main method-- that will also land the defense back in court. Even if the diversion plan is completed, the records don't necessarily get sealed immediately, leaving them still open to background checks where this pops up, which is exactly what people think they are avoiding when they plead guilty and enter diversion plans.
This is not justice and it is certainly not "curiosity rewarded," not by society at large at least. This is Homer Hickam calling bullshit when he sees it and trying to provide this poor girl with a silver lining that might just cancel out some of the negative effects of this incident.
The putative reason for designating the Works and Drano "bombs" and the dry ice "bomb as criminal destructive devices is to stop terrorism, but it's little more than laziness on the part of legislatures. Objects shouldn't be criminalized, only what you intend to do or in-fact do with them. Even if one could argue that objects themselves should be outlawed, there has to be some sort of proportionality that defines the punishment based on it's destructive potential (a device made of a plastic bottle than can contain 80-120 psi in a volume of 2 liters or less like a soda bottle is of little use to terrorist. However, a destructive device using something like an air compressor shell is something different, as that can contain 250 or more psi in a metallic shrapnel creating body which has a volume of 8-16 liters. That has real destructive capability.).
Personally, I think if you blow up your own beater car in an empty field and do no other harm? It shouldn't be illegal (with littering charges if they leave the burnt carcass behind instead of properly disposing of it). But if you harm someone else then throw the book at 'em. A kid blowing-out a soda bottle in their back yard may be due a lecture but a kid destroying a neighbor's mailbox should be forced to pay restitution and do community service and perhaps should be into a Summer science program to teach them some respect for the chemistry and forces involved. Putting them in jail will probably lead to them sharing the wealth of their knowledge with other kids who will find new and ingenious ways of using that knowledge for mischievous ends . . .Unfortunately, in the criminal justice system, the only tool they seem to have is to imprison people and if the only tool you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail. A damn shame really as we're criminalizing ingenuity and smothering our children's potential with fear.
Her adventurous Spirit is an example for all of us.
And while in high school he did set off a rocket and have cops come after him accusing him of starting a forest fire. In his case, his teachers stood by him and proved that he did not cause the fire.
So you can understand why he'd be supportive of the girl.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
The girl mixed two types of chemicals in a small water bottle. Its not unlike putting pop rocks or mentos into a bottle of coca cola, and capping it. It pressures up, the plastic cap pops off and instead of soda coming out, you get a bit of white smoke. A real explosion is the gasoline/air mixture in the engine of your car. *THAT* is a big explosion. Except that the administrators don't look at it that way. It doesn't matter that popping a balloon makes more noise. It doesn't matter that there was no property damage. It doesn't matter that no one was hurt, shaken up, or otherwise affected (not even sticky pop). That doesn't matter. A small chemical reaction occurred. Curiosity was satisfied, but rules were broken. The rules are clear, anyone not following the rules must be killed. There is no leeway in the rules. Now it all comes down to the purpose of education. If the purpose of education is to educate, to teach students, to have them learn, be inquisitive of the world and adapt to it, then the education at this school is a joke. The science teacher could have explained the reaction, and the administrators could have warned about safety and not mixing chemicals without first knowing what they do, and not doing it on school property. But that's not what happened. The administrators are people who sit and administer. The reason we have courts and judges instead of just laws is that the law is flexible and not stupid. Assinine rules are what administrators administer. They aren't interested in education. They are interested in creating machines that operate in a very fixed, controlled way. The run a factory creating industrial robots. Curiosity must be eradicated! Self expression will not be tolerated! Its a draconian system the administrators have set up. They have built a silo in the name of safety. Anything outside of what they decide to be normal is unforgivable. A system like that is easily gamed, and they deserve to be gamed.
"I believe rules are rules and you break them, you should be punished, not rewarded." - Congratulations, you have met the requirements for German citizenship.
I was going to say "you must be a Good German", but it amounts to the same thing.
Here's another hole in the US educational system, textbooks which portray Germany (indeed much of the world) as having stopped progress in 1945. Germany is now a diverse multi-cultural society you wouldn't recognize Germany from your dusty textbook. The average German is far more liberal, tolerant and open-minded than the majority of Americans and Germany retains its scientific excellence even after exporting some of its brightest to the US back when there was a space race.
Draconian laws with NO EXCEPTIONS EVER (except for politically powerful or those wealthy enough to buy into lawyer-based economy) have made the US less free than most of the western world, certainly less free than most of Europe (including Germany.) The wonderful American concept of written law, applied equally to everyone (except the poor, minorities, immigrants, people in interment camps...) is something to be admired, but to expect that even the gigabytes of man-made law written in our high-entropy language can encode justice for every situation is daft. This failure of written law is why we have a justice system with judges and juries of peers.
have her write a paper on the risks of experimenting with homemade explosives and what safety measures she should have taken, but didn't and how it could be done more safely next time
She should help Conn and Hal Iggulden write "The Dangerous Book for Girls" an updated version of their "The Dangerous book for boys." It's no coincidence that it was not first published in the US. Conn and Hal would probably be spending time at gitmo. My elementary school library had a shelf full of science books with far more dangerous experiments, build a hydrogen balloon, make coal gas, go down to your chemist and buy some quinine of mercury for a fun magic trick. Even in the 70s it was difficult to get the nineteenth century Britain raw materials (who the heck is going to sell a 10-year old HCL or H2SO4? Nowadays it's tough even to get borax for that basement fusion reactor. Now get off my lawn!
Homer Hickam! YOU RULE! May the Universe expand in your favor! Hope restored :)
So do you think children should be free to perform unsupervised and potentially dangerous experiments in school? I agree that the reaction was overblown, but she did deserve a slap on the wrist, not a congratulation.
Let's trace this through.
Student does dumb thing against school regs. This deserves some sort of punishment. She is expelled, and faces felony charges. Way overkill. There was no call here to involve the police.
Student becomes cause celebre, winds up with all charges dropped, is notable enough to get private citizens to fund space camp for her.
If the police and legal system had not been called in, she would have been disciplined by the school, and that would have been that. Nobody outside the school and neighborhood would ever have heard of her. Nobody would have set up a fund for her. The consequence would have been school discipline (too harsh to my mind, but that was the policy). In addition, she was hit with felony charges that had an excellent chance of destroying the rest of her life. I don't know exactly what her experience with the police and legal system was, but it had to be at the very least really scary. Think of space camp as a rather clumsy effort to make up for that.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Which rule did she knowingly break?
In just a few years with any luck, she will have the opportunity to play with far more dangerous reactions in her school. It's called organic chemistry. Also with luck, she will have been taught the necessary safety precautions by that time.