Florida Teen Girl Charged With Felony After Science Experiment Goes Bad

[lxskllr]

Eh...erm yeah when I was a kid we'd ummm...well we would sit around in rocking chairs and knit sweaters.....boy those were good times. Good times!

Hope you weren't knitting them with the historically accurate stabbing spikes. Luckily knitting has fallen from favor, or we'd have weaponized individuals threatening our kid's safety. They couldn't even go to McDonalds without the threat of death from "hobbyists" that feel they're entitled to dangerous implements.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Black powder pffft! They'd probably give me the chair for setting off some home made Nitrogen Triiodide when I was 12.

 

[BUTCH1]

nobody was injured

was that not clear?

Yea, it's clear, soda containers are actually pressure vessels though, it takes quite a bit to cause one to fail, there is a "slight" risk to injury if one did. I don't see this as just a FL thing though, the "zero-tolerance" is in full effect everywhere, look at the story of the kid with who took a "3 Swiss army knife camping last week..

 

[lxskllr]

Black powder pffft! They'd probably give me the chair for setting off some home made Nitrogen Triiodide when I was 12.

I made my own black powder when I was kid. I went to the drug store for potassium nitrate, and got turned down. I had to take my father with me to get it :^D

 

[jagec]

Yes, anything that goes bang is now illegal and you'll end up in prison.

Except, of course, for guns, because more guns make us safer.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

I made my own black powder when I was kid. I went to the drug store for potassium nitrate, and got turned down. I had to take my father with me to get it :^D

I distilled my own ammonia which was probably as dangerous as setting off the explosive. When I was a kid, there were scientific supply houses that had no problem sending chemicals through the mail, I just couldn't find any straight ammonia.

 

[BUTCH1]

Except, of course, for guns, because more guns make us safer.

Lawnchair time

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Except, of course, for guns, because more guns make us safer.

Yeah, like that highschool kid that was expelled for having a shotgun in the back of his truck after skeet shooting the previous day.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

We made bows in wood shop. We had range safety classes after school and kids brought their rifles to school and left them in their lockers. No one ever got shot.

 

[natto fire]

Yea, it's clear, soda containers are actually pressure vessels though, it takes quite a bit to cause one to fail, there is a "slight" risk to injury if one did. I don't see this as just a FL thing though, the "zero-tolerance" is in full effect everywhere, look at the story of the kid with who took a "3 Swiss army knife camping last week..

Remember before advanced plastics science and they had to make soda bottles spherical on one end and they had a black plastic "base" glued on to the bottom?

I get your point, but trying to legislate every possible danger away seems kind of counter-productive to how many human endeavors furthering civilization were not without risks. Not that mindless teenage fun will statistically yield civilization enhancing benefits, it still serves to well round an individual and the lack of it only seems to make society's orbit around the drain that much tighter.

 

[BUTCH1]

Remember before advanced plastics science and they had to make soda bottles spherical on one end and they had a black plastic "base" glued on to the bottom?

I get your point, but trying to legislate every possible danger away seems kind of counter-productive to how many human endeavors furthering civilization were not without risks. Not that mindless teenage fun will statistically yield civilization enhancing benefits, it still serves to well round an individual and the lack of it only seems to make society's orbit around the drain that much tighter.

Yea, she just picked a bad place in a nutshell, hell we used to lite gas fires, pool chlorine fires, explode shit with M-80's, ect..

 

[natto fire]

Yea, she just picked a bad place in a nutshell, hell we used to lite gas fires, pool chlorine fires, explode shit with M-80's, ect..

I remember discovering at a very early age that gasoline was not as volatile substance as TV and movies would have you believe (soda cans filled to brim with gas, light top and hit with a golf club, and I still have all my limbs). Upgraded to CO2 cartridges with black powder and then got my drivers license and realized simple physics were much more dangerous and exciting than chemistry, albeit chemistry was huge in play getting the physics going.

 

[WHAMPOM]

Ah the good old days, replacing 12 Gauge shotgun pellets with paper and shooting them at each other. Dare I mention the lighter fluid "BOOMER" and the final propane cannon?

If a popped off bottle top is an explosive, then so is every soda drink a CO2 bomb.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

We had empty fields to play in. Ever seen what an M-80 with a 50# sack of fertilizer on top buried 4 feet down can do? Bam! Instant basement for the club house. It felt like it rained dirt clods for hours.

 

[Red Squirrel]

The tearrists have won.

I had lot of fun in chemistry class back in high school, perhaps even missbehaving a bit such as putting way more of something that I was suppose to. Was all fun and games, and nobody lost an eye and nobody got in trouble. My first time messing with acid had to be the coolest thing ever. Man that stuff would react so violently, I forget what we put in it, calcium I think.

The best was the experiments where the instructions told us to do things that the bottle said not to do.

 

[Farang]

Recalling childhood weaponry, the potato gun was the coolest. Now they'd probably charge us with trying to shoot down aircraft (we would aim them at planes, but off course the potato didn't have nearly the range)

 

[Red Squirrel]

Recalling childhood weaponry, the potato gun was the coolest. Now they'd probably charge us with trying to shoot down aircraft (we would aim them at planes, but off course the potato didn't have nearly the range)

lol and they'd probably label it as something like "improvised anti-aircraft device".

 

[natto fire]

Recalling childhood weaponry, the potato gun was the coolest. Now they'd probably charge us with trying to shoot down aircraft (we would aim them at planes, but off course the potato didn't have nearly the range)

Piezoelectrics become a controlled detonation device.

 

[OutHouse]

Ironic, my son (13) told me that he needs two 2liter pop bottles for making pressure rocketes for science class on monday.

 

[KaOTiK]

Man, as others have said, things have changed. I remember in high school, one of the fields in the back of the school that wasn't used for any classes/sports we would go out there like every other week with the teacher and he would make some nice big explosions and other stuff. Hell our woodworking class, for a group project 6 of us made a fully functioning catapult and got to test it out back there (we got an A ) that was about the size of a VW Beetle almost lol. You know, I don't remember like 80% (probably more) of HS classes, but those classes I remember the majority of them very well.

 

[OutHouse]

I distilled my own ammonia which was probably as dangerous as setting off the explosive. When I was a kid, there were scientific supply houses that had no problem sending chemicals through the mail, I just couldn't find any straight ammonia.

Lol. Why???

 

[DrPizza]

It's just plain idiotic to make this a felony. It's incredibly stupid. Misdemeanor, definitely, depending on how it was used (used to destroy property.) But... felony?? If I inflate a thick balloon until it pops, is that the same thing? What about a water bottle? Felony?

Last year, my class made rockets out of 2-liter bottles. For the first time in about a decade of doing this lab, one of the bottles ruptured ("exploded") at about 95psi. It blew an egg, egg-vehicle, and parachute to smithereens. Should I and my student be in jail for being terruhists? No one was injured, and this year, I'm adding some sort of layer of safety. (I've already moved even further from the parking lot after one of the rockets made a bottle-cap sized dimple in the pavement right next to a car - that would have broken a windshield.) Whoa... maybe they'll consider that I'm training a terruhist cell.

edit: and the student whose egg capsule was completely destroyed on the launch pad is currently studying aero/astro engineering at M.I.T. Some students are inspired by stuff like this, hence take the girl aside & work with her, rather than punitively destroy her life.

 

[allisolm]

I see a BIG difference between DRPizza conducting class experiments (and yet still almost damaging property after many years of repetition) and one teen, unsupervised, surrounded by other teens, setting off a device on school property when she had no idea what the results would be.

According to her lawyer here no felony charges have been filed, the expulsion isn't a sure thing, and she's being treated as a juvenile. He seems hopeful it will work out.

I, too, hope she can get out of this without life-altering consequences - say worst case juvenile misdemeanor charges resulting in probation and that are sealed. Best case for me would be drop the criminal charges, some suspension from school, but not expulsion.

 

[randomrogue]

Yeah when I set off dry ice bombs after school at night I knew there would be consequences if I got caught. Science experiment my ass.

Felony though? Expelled? Really?

 

[Murloc]

"Science experiment" my ass. "She told police that she was conducting a science experiment, though it does not appear to have been an experiment her teachers assigned."

She was trying to play with explosives and screwed up.

She did something completely unrelated to science experiments, it's clear it's an excuse, but nothing really dangerous.

There's kids using petards in school every year during Carnival and those are dangerous too if they do stupid stuff such as opening them and trying to ignite and burning their face or other stuff like that. And the police doesn't get involved.

This was way overblown, disciplinary action within the school should be applied, not police.
By all means a suspension if it was done inside, or a severe reprimand and punition, like cleaning the school grounds for a month, even expulsion if she's known as a difficult individual and there is a way for expelled people to finish their degree (according to the article), but criminal prosecution for "kids being kids" stuff is overdoing it.
At least she'll be able to hide it later in life if she's a minor.