I guess I think this happened because the teacher did not recognize or understand the hazard. I think this is because their safety education was missing or inadequate and/or a safety ethic was missing or inadequate. Most of you have heard my thoughts on
this before. Until we start educating our undergraduates in lab safety, we will continue to have teachers, graduate students, and chemists with poor knowledge of safety and poor safety ethics.
Robert H. Hill, Jr.
Co-author of Laboratory Safety for Chemistry Students
Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone
-------- Original message --------
From: Rita Kay Calhoun <
r..calhoun**At_Symbol_Here**MOREHEADSTATE.EDU>
Date: 11/06/2015 3:55 PM (GMT-05:00)
To:
DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**MED.CORNELL.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] NSTA Urges Science Educators to Halt the Use of Methanol-Based Flame Tests on Open Laboratory Desks
I disagree that the question is why did the teacher do the demo. The question was why was the teacher so stupid as to pour a flammable liquid onto a flame. Anyone over the age of 6 should know that this is dangerous. I sometimes wonder if the recent increase
in the apparent lack of "common sense" (yes, I said common sense because it is common sense to be wary of flames) is an unexpected result of the fear of even minor dangers that has resulted in many schools only doing experiments that a kindergartener could
do. In order to be able to cross a street safely, you actually have to practice crossing a street safely. Rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, perhaps we should learn/teach how to bathe the baby without drowning it.
Kay
-----Original Message-----
From: DCHAS-L Discussion List [
mailto:dchas-l**At_Symbol_Here**med.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Frankie Wood-Black
Sent: Friday, November 06, 2015 3:07 PM
To:
DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**MED.CORNELL.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] NSTA Urges Science Educators to Halt the Use of Methanol-Based Flame Tests on Open Laboratory Desks
A question for the group and maybe to a wider audience. After the last set of announcements and the CSB alert, my question is related to why this teacher chose to do it. One reason may have been that they felt they could do it because they had numerous times.
The other is that they were unaware of the recommendations NOT to do this particular demonstration anymore. SO - my question is - is there an avenue that we should be using to inform teachers about the hazards of this experiment that have not been utilized
previously - and if so - what would it be????
