Sunday
The June edition of technology, futurism and culture magazine Wired has a fascinating piece by Steve Silberman about growing government restrictions in the United States on home-chemistry kits and how this could bar children from learning from, and getting excited by, science. Instead, children are likely to increasingly encounter chemistry and science not up close in a lab and by playing around with kits, but via video or school labs where experiments are conducted in highly protected environments. I can see the thought process here: "If youngsters get home-kits to make chemical experiments, then the odd potential bin Laden brewing up a concoction in his bedroom could go out and try to blow people up." Small-scale amateur rocketry has already experienced similar bans or restrictions on stuff like the fuel used ("some nut might shoot a plane out of the sky!").
But the security services are missing the "Pack not a herd" point of Glenn Reynolds and others: namely, that in a rich civil society where lots of people have hobbies and interests including messing around with chemistry, physics and technology in their spare time, it creates a natural "social capital", if you will, of people who can prove mighty useful in an emergency. The same edition of Wired magazine has an article on how companies like Proctor and Gamble use home-based scientists - what Wired calls "crowdsourcing" - to fix problems that their own in-house professionals take more time and a lot more money to solve. If I were a defence or security official, instead of treating all amateur scientists as potential trouble-makers, I'd co-opt them, issue prizes for new ideas, and so forth. I suppose this links to my point below about the value of X-Prize contests.
So by all means be vigilant in the fight against terror. But if geeky children want to learn more about chemistry at home, I think that is a healthy thing to be encouraged. Our ancestors, such as these fellows, who often arrived at scientific breakthroughs after exploring scientific ideas in a far less regulated environment than today, certainly would have agreed.
Makes you wonder what would have happened in the 1920's if a certain Frank Whittle had not been allowed to continue his membership of the RAF Model Aircraft Society, since messing about with jet turbines could be construed as too dangerous. Let alone what would have happened in an earlier age if Alfred Nobel had been told to stop playing around with explosives ...
Posted by Julian Taylor at July 9, 2006 03:38 PM
Apparently it's becoming an increasing problem with studying chemistry even at university. It's too dangerous to do actual experiments; you just look at 'computer simulations' instead. Oh the excitement.
That way. of course, the young scientist becomes trained to notice only those things he's told to notice; there is no possibility of any discrepancy being discovered.
An ideal 'learning experience' for the 21st century.
Posted by Brian at July 9, 2006 03:59 PM
In my young days everyone had a chemistry set.
When you ran out of the paultry amount of say, Sodium Nitrate, sulphur etc that the christmas chemistry set had provided, you just went to the nearest chemists (aged 12) and could buy enormous bags of any chemical you wanted. Then you could go to a place that sold you chemical equipment, test tubes, boiling flasks etc with not questions asked.
Most of our greatest discoveries have come from an amateur mucking about in a back room.
Security is one thing, but in its name they are shutting down hands on curiosity and invention.
Posted by RAB at July 9, 2006 06:33 PM
Fortunately for model rocketry in the US, powerful fuels remain available to those who know how to use them. Certain commercially available rocket motors are theoretically powerful enough to levitiate compact cars.
Posted by Ncx at July 9, 2006 11:06 PM
Bureaucrats do not suffer the consequences of good things that don't happen. They live in fear of the bad things that might happen on their watch. No restriction is too severe to save their phoney baloney jobs.
Posted by Max at July 10, 2006 04:01 AM
Well said Max.
I think its time for another outing of this article Beware the Precautionary Principle, from the Social Issues Research Centre, Oxford, UK. [As referenced, with other useful material, on Samizdata.]
Best regards
Posted by Nigel Sedgwick at July 10, 2006 08:02 AM
I keenly remember my early teenage days with a Russian-made home chemical kit. It included some substances that might not be sold these days to children, such as metallic magnesium or sodium hydroxide.
It was such a fun to produce pure chlorine or chlorine-based acids... Secret inks were fun, too. I disliked sulphur dioxide, however, for its foul smell.
Oh, those were days. My early interest in chemistry was unfortunately killed at the high school where we were required to memorize structural formulas of complex organic molecules without any requirement to understand what it really means...
So I switched to computer programming, which was not officially taught at that days, and thus was much more fun.
Posted by Pavel at July 10, 2006 10:58 AM
Maybe there's a way to power our Estes rockets with Diet Coke and Mentos.
Posted by Alan K. Henderson at July 10, 2006 11:19 AM
