10-Year-Old Accidentally Discovers New Explosive Molecule
- Thread starter Mike Kayatta
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Yes, because its something that doesn't happen every week.Matthew94 said:
See, I can bold things to make my point too
[small][small][small]bolding things when you don't need to annoys me a tad *twitch*[/small][/small][/small]
Edit: Ninja'd by enough people that I really should have checked before I posted. Fancy that. Ah well, i'll add my voice to the masses.
That doesnt say anything. Those examples are used more for journalistic flair than anything. This story isnt hard news, its just a cute story about a little girl and science. Cute little girl puts a model together, discovers a new molecule. Someone writes a story on it, people share it, traffic goes up, everyone is happy.Matthew94 said:
Why are you so mad about this? Its baffling how much this set you off. Ive imagined these scenarios
1. You're a 20 something scientific genius whose works hard, but is never recognised.
2. Your Grandfather was a brilliant scientist who was never recognised, and died in anomity.
3. You found this molecule first and were about to release a paper on it, but the girl beat you to it
4. You're a high school student who likes science and is annoyed that people dont care about it as much as you do.
5. Youre a 9 year old who discovered a molecule a month ago, but werent recognised.
6. You think chemistry is a load of old shit and people should be concentrating on physics instead.
7. You're mad there are at least 93 other Matthews on this site, and that drives you into a rage whenever you see your username.
You sound really, really bitter about this. Why are you being so antagonistic? So what if she didn't know what she was doing? She's fucking 10 years old, and now people who do know what they are doing are expanding on the possibility of this discovery being legitimate. It's not like the article stated the girl is being regarded as the messiah of chemistry or anything. Besides, now the children are more interested in learning about science, and scientists have something new to play with.Matthew94 said:
Lighten up. This is a time for joy, not cynicism.
I imagine since this WAS science class she had some inkling of what she was doing, at least in attempting to build a feasible molecule. Other than that I must say, why the attitude? Jealous?Matthew94 said:
Matthew94 said:
I get that you find this uninteresting or that we shouldn't be praising her, but I come to a basic question: Why are you so bothered by people being happy at this? Because as others have pointed out, you sound really bitter about.
Toodles
-Caleb
OT: Personally, I think that's pretty cool
I'm struggling to type a coherent response to this, because as a chemistry major graduating in December who does computational chemistry research at Gannon University, I'm pissed that something like this can't happen to me.
Good Lord help me. It doesn't matter how she did it, she made a scientific discovery even though it was an accident. Do you know how many scientific discoveries were made by accident? Like Coca-Cola, Teflon, Smart Dust, Vulcanized rubber, plastic, radioactive materials, the pacemaker, penicillin, all made by accident.Matthew94 said:
The fact that it wasn't intentional doesn't mean it's not a valid scientific discovery.
Accidentally, random chance... That's how science works. We make mistakes and learn from them. What I'm kinda seeing here is people are angry that a mistake was made by a child and it is treated as science.
This is just a case to show you don't need a lab suit and several degrees in science to be valid to make a new discovery.
Plus, it is good encouragement for the children of the class to experiment and learn. Great encouragement knowing that one day you might discover a new chemical or molecule.
This is just a case to show you don't need a lab suit and several degrees in science to be valid to make a new discovery.
Plus, it is good encouragement for the children of the class to experiment and learn. Great encouragement knowing that one day you might discover a new chemical or molecule.
Cynical much?Matthew94 said:
First off, she was experimenting; experimenting with chemistry modeling kits. And it would be silly to dismiss that; scientists use representative models in chemistry all the time. She tried something that no one had considered before, and it led to a discovery. That is the essence of scientific research.
And if it was, as you say, "random," so what? If she had randomly discovered the cure for cancer because she was randomly mixing chemicals in a chemistry set to "see what would happen," she shouldn't receive any sort of praise or thanks for her contribution to health science and the lives that would be improved?
Are you so cynical that you can't simply appreciate experimentation, curiosity, and ingenuity in its most basic form? If so, I feel sorry for you.
I accessed the academic paper:
A computational study of novel nitratoxycarbon, nitritocarbonyl, and nitrate compounds and their potential as high energy materials
Robert W. Zoellner, Clara L. Lazen, Kenneth M. Boehr
The basic format of the paper is "lets use these computers to calculate properties of this random molecule...here are the numbers from the computer. the end." Reading between the lines it's easy to see what happened.
1. The school teacher is in Missouri, and the professor is in California. Either the schoolteacher spammed professors nationwide and finally this guy from a crap university responded, or else the two knew each other so it was nepotism from the start.
2. Humbolt state university. No offense to anyone who went there, but in terms of academic research, this school is very far down on the list, somewhere like #200 in the nation. Most research that matters comes from professors in the top 20 schools.
So yeah, basically the school teacher wanted to push this "molecule discovery" story that no real chemist would care about, a stoned hippy prof (see picture: http://www.humboldt.edu/chemistry/faculty/zoellner.html ) at a bottom rung cal-state school needed to crap out a paper to justify the grant he used to buy a new computer, and thus this media blurb was born.
A computational study of novel nitratoxycarbon, nitritocarbonyl, and nitrate compounds and their potential as high energy materials
Robert W. Zoellner, Clara L. Lazen, Kenneth M. Boehr
The basic format of the paper is "lets use these computers to calculate properties of this random molecule...here are the numbers from the computer. the end." Reading between the lines it's easy to see what happened.
1. The school teacher is in Missouri, and the professor is in California. Either the schoolteacher spammed professors nationwide and finally this guy from a crap university responded, or else the two knew each other so it was nepotism from the start.
2. Humbolt state university. No offense to anyone who went there, but in terms of academic research, this school is very far down on the list, somewhere like #200 in the nation. Most research that matters comes from professors in the top 20 schools.
So yeah, basically the school teacher wanted to push this "molecule discovery" story that no real chemist would care about, a stoned hippy prof (see picture: http://www.humboldt.edu/chemistry/faculty/zoellner.html ) at a bottom rung cal-state school needed to crap out a paper to justify the grant he used to buy a new computer, and thus this media blurb was born.
If anything this proves how efficient our chemical modeling techniques are becoming. Think about it, the model kit was obviously complex enough to maintain the basic rules of molecular bonding, yet simple enough for a child to somewhat understand the "rules" of the model.
All the kid had to do was apply simple ideas like symmetry and balance, follow the model's rules, and voala, a feasible molecule appears just as bonding theory expects it to.
Yay science.
All the kid had to do was apply simple ideas like symmetry and balance, follow the model's rules, and voala, a feasible molecule appears just as bonding theory expects it to.
Yay science.
I care!Matthew94 said:
I also think that there is a decent chance that Clara will become a scientist. Hell, if I randomly discovered a new molecule when I was 10, I would become at least 100x more interested in science because I just discovered a molecule.
