Nope, not just helium. Other things, like, say, track and field (might fall down and hurt yourself), woodshop (those saws are dangerous!) and of course chemistry lab, yikes! And any kid who turns cartwheels out on the playgroud should be dealt with harshly.
Your position, when actually adopted in practice, is ludicrous. It’s clear that some level of risk is and should be accepted. The question is where to draw the line. In this case, the school administrator drew the line somewhere most rational people find surprising. If it weren’t surprising, it wouldn’t be much of a news story, would it?
Uh, no bingo. It may be inhaled, but it’s an inert gas. It’s not a drug. And why does it need to be “covered”?
What’s draconian about the punishment is that it’s for behavior that isn’t obviously wrong. Running with scissors is known to be dangerous. Smoking weed is known to be against the rules. But inhaling helium? How was the kid to know that that would get him detention and have to skip recess for three days? At worst it should merit a scolding and notification that it’s against the [weird, arbitrary] rules.
I disagree that most rational people find the decision of the administrators surprising. You obviously differ. If they had actually suspended him from school for three days, I might agree that the punishment was out of line. You obviously would have done nothing.
Of course segments of the media(in my experience services such as FOX) love to get such a story and run with it. What else is new?
Media such as FOX will also put on shows questioning whether we landed on the moon. It’s the ratings, man.
5% arsenic in something that gets vented into the lab ? I worry that you might be my old ChemEng TA.
Am I out of my head here ? In what possible way could arsenic be (1) mixed with a gas, and (2) keep helium from *spoiling *?
You could mix yourself up some arsine gas (AsH3), nifty for making silicon chips and poisioning enemy troops, but not what I’d want in my “research-grade” Helium tank.
Tell me you can cite something about that, PT, so I can go donate my liver after spending my formative years as an inert-gas welder.
(On thread: Yep, zero-tolerance rules are a lovely example of my thesis on the flexibility of law; if discretion has no place then all we need for law and order is a book and a gun. )
Right - I was guessing someone would want more clarification (damn the SDMB and the ferreting out, and savaging to death of ignorance!).
To address your points in no particular order:
I can’t remember if it is arsenic or cyanide. The exact percentage might be 5% +/- 0.5%. It is obviously not in the really pure grade helium.
I would never vent helium into a lab since it’s dangerous.
I don’t know how the <whatever additive> keeps it stable/from breaking down/‘fresh’ longer.
I will try and go over to the canister in question - which has the details on the side - but I’m a bit pressed for time at the moment so don’t hold your breath. I will, no doubt, find that it is not aresnic/cyanide but some other, really harmless gas - but, hey, at least that will be a bit of ignorance savaged to death…
Zero tolerance as a policy (IMHO) is certainly taken to extremes every day in our schools. In this case I don’t think it was.
The thing that allows for such policies to be ameliorated, IMHO, is the punishment inflicted. In other words,
is just hyperbole on your part. What you need is punishment meeted out with humanity. What the kid got was just that. They didn’t expell him from school. They didn’t shoot him. They kept him within the system and told him that his behavior was not what was expected of kids in the school. Totally appropriate to me, and I consider myself a reasonble parent of kids currently in US schools between the grades of 3-9. YMMV.
When I worked at CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) Girls Camp, we counselors discovered where the key was to the helium cabinet…in the little chapel.
The chapel was connected to our community building where we would have these ‘end of the trip’ vaudeville-like shows for the outgoing campers.
Many a times the grossly underpaid, overworked, bored couselerrs would hit the helium tank before doing our songs.
Hearing a bunch of squeaky voices sing, " I believe the children are our future…" just brought down the house every time.
Then, when we would sing for our Sunday services, slipping into the back room, getting a hit, then singing " Kumbaya My Lord" in the squeaky voices, again, made everyone just about piss their pants from the hilarity.
Naturally, the Anti Fun Brigade figured out a way to lock the cabinet once and for all, but OOOOOH, the fun we had!
**Carry on **
What? You thing the Big Gal upstairs doesn’t have a sense of humor?
No cite, but that seems unlikely. Your lungs can hold a lot more pressure than your lips…If something’s going to break, it’ll be the seal between your lips and the valve, not your lung.
When roachman rode to town, the women folk would hide, they’d hide
When roachman walked around, the men would step aside
The kind of a man the west would need to tame a troubled land
On topic, I’ll say for the hundredth time, I never cease to be amazed at the idiocy of the people we pay to educate our children. They can’t even figure out how to handle a simple situation like this, and they want to question parents to see whether they (the parents) are fit to raise a child, and doing it properly?! @#**@!*!*@!!#
How can helium “spoil”? It’s an inert gas, and it’s just a bunch of He molecules. There’s nothing to decay. The only problem for keeping it around for extended periods of time is the steady leaking of the tank–the molecules are light, small, and move quickly.
