How Regulations Hamper Chemical Hobbyists 610
An anonymous reader writes "Chemical & Engineering News just ran this story that relates how government regulations create a terribly restrictive atmosphere for people who do chemistry as a hobby. (A related story was previously posted.)" The article gives some examples of why hamfisted regulations are harmful even to those who aren't doing the chemistry themselves: "Hobby chemists will tell you that home labs have been the source of some of chemistry's greatest contributions. Charles Goodyear figured out how to vulcanize rubber with the same stove that his wife used to bake the family's bread. Charles Martin Hall discovered the economical electrochemical process for refining aluminum from its ore in a woodshed laboratory near his family home. A plaque outside Sir William Henry Perkin's Cable Street residence in London notes that the chemist 'discovered the first aniline dyestuff, March 1856, while working in his home laboratory on this site and went on to found science-based industry.'"
bureacratic reactant (Score:5, Funny)
Is but a silly distractant
Try the anionic surfactant:
Burma Shave
Hobby chemist (Score:5, Funny)
Back in college... (Score:5, Funny)
Chemical Hobbyist? Is that like a drug user?
Re:Back in college... (Score:5, Funny)
Does it count as recreation when you're expanding your mind?
Also, where's that music coming from?!
Re:Back in college... (Score:5, Funny)
Also, where's that music coming from?!
The Cylons
Doomsday. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Doomsday. (Score:5, Insightful)
Enough said.
Re:Doomsday. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is kind of like gun laws. All it really does is keep the stuff out of the hands of law abiding citizens. Most criminals aren't going to care if the substances they are using are illegal for them to have if they're going to use them to break the law anyway.
Fear mongering (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Doomsday. (Score:5, Informative)
The thing to remember about people making drugs, is that chemistry isn't a hobby for them. If they need something, and it'll cost them $50 extra so that they can smuggle it into their state, or set up a fake business to get something shipped to, that isn't a problem for them.
But for the hobbyist, unless they want to become a criminal to do their chemistry a little more safely, there's no way they're going to be able to get what they need.
In a lot of ways it's cyclical. Ban the tools people need to do chemistry safely, someone gets harmed doing chemistry because they can't get what they need, ban more chemistry equipment from hobbyists.
Re:Doomsday. (Score:5, Insightful)
In defense of the gun people, anytime a really bad government comes along high up on their "todo" list is to take away arms. They realize that there is only so far you can push an armed populace. This makes gun rights a political barrier much more than home chemistry labs. Hats off to them.
Let's not forget the -good- scientists... (Score:5, Funny)
It's true, you raise an important point about the mad scientists. How is one supposed to perform mad science without the requisite chemicals? I suppose next they'll ban the use of decorative Tesla coils...
But there's another angle: we have to consider how this kind of legislation impacts the upstanding, college-educated, pipe-smoking benevolent scientist. How is Small-Town-Plagued-By-Bizarre-Monsters to be saved if their local College-Educated Scientist can't perform the experiments necessary to find the one chemical which will defeat the evil fiends? How will the comrades of said scientist defeat the monsters if they can't travel to a nearby chemical supply warehouse to get the chemical they need in sufficient quantity?
Now, not all monster scenarios require a chemist, it's true. From time to time a monster will appear whose one weakness is something as simple as Sodium Chloride ("Ordinary table salt!") - but what about the monsters who are vulnerable to sodium in its pure form? Or what if defeating the monsters requires large quantities of hydrochloric acid, or Potassium Iodide, or any one of a number of other sciency-sounding things?
Yep, before you know it we'll be overrun by superintelligent ants or fish-men or mole people or giant lobsters and then we'll just wish we hadn't cracked down on all this science!
Re:Let's not forget the -good- scientists... (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, before you know it we'll be overrun by superintelligent ants or fish-men or mole people or giant lobsters.
Well, I for one...
...am not quite certain which of those I should welcome.
Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine that any kind of scientific exploration is viewed with distrust and quite a bit of fear. My son has recently discovered the world of electronics, and I feel bad for him since even radio shack doesn't carry what it used to.
I wonder if this shift is endemic in our country, from a nation of strivers to a nation purely of consumers.
--
Keep One Eye Open on Craiglist.com - Search hundreds of communities from one place with one click [bigattichouse.com]
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Informative)
A trip to Home Depot can net some interesting stuff too. Sulfuric acid, Hydrochloric acid, and Potassium Hydroxide, all sold right next to each other in the plumbing aisle.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So... You can make a really dilute solution of Hydrochloric acid and WATER? How is THAT dangerous?
(HINT: Sulfuric Acid and Potassium Hydroxide neutralize each other and the resultant material is plain old H2O. Throw in some Hydrochloric acid and you have acidic water.)
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Informative)
Hint: when those two mix it produces a lot of heat so I would hope that the good people of Home Depot really don't store them next to each other.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I managed a Radio Shack store, 01-896*, in Florida.
Radio Shack stopped carrying most things due to liability. They even got sued for a kid coming in, getting a reed switch, and using it to kill his parents (true story).
From that point on, we where TOLD not to answer any questions, since answering a question can lead to legal actions against both you and the store (it's that entire helping the bad guy thing).
There are still some good kits available on the internet. Check out Google, it's your friend.
--Toll_Free
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Interesting)
A) [citation needed]
B) Radio Shack carries reed switches. I bought one last week.
They don't carry the variety of basic components they used to, because consumer gadgets are more profitable; but they carry some. So I think your liability story is BS.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Discrete components have gotten more and more expensive. In the past, the electronic components you bought at Radio Shack were the same parts that were used in the complete devices sold in the same store.
Today, electronic devices use tiny ASICs under epoxy blobs, surface mount microcontrolers, tiny capacitors and resistors that are sold on a reel and connected by a very precise pick and place machines... The discrete components are now manufactured solely for prototyping and hobby use. With the decrease in volume, the cost has shot up. Not only does that cut into the margins of a company like Radio Shack, but it also inflates the cost of stocking each store.
On the other hand, an internet supplier only has to keep one set of stock, can sell for less, can keep a wider variety... Radio Shack can't compete with that. They'd be fools to carry the types of components that they used to. Access to parts is greater now than it was anyway.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So, "you've got questions, to freaking bad"?
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Funny)
Or around here: "you've got questions, we've got blank stares"
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Interesting)
>and I feel bad for him since even radio shack doesn't carry what it used to.
It's the same where I live ( the UK )
Radio shack are no longer interested in supplying components, just crap white goods. I can understand why though; whats the profit margin on a resistor? And have you ever stood in line behind the electronics buff who is buying 20 components, and takes half an hour?
Personally, I think they should install vending machines in Radio Shack for components. I might start using them again if they did!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty good, probably. In bulk they've got to be really cheap, probably less than a penny each. Put a couple into twenty cents worth of packaging and sell the package for a dollar. Even with the cost of moving the packages to the stores, that's got to be a good markup.
My guess is that the profit per item was good, but the volume was too low, so the overall ROI for the effort wasn't worthwhile. Selling the same packages over the internet, or just selling the items with m
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is precisely the sort of thing that Sagan worries about in Demon-Haunted World.
When science is a distrusted, mysterious thing that only people in white coats and with proper licenses can hope to understand, let alone do, how can we educate new scientists? Will we encourage children to enter the profession? Can we make informed decisions in our political process if we view science in this way?
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I make soap, partially for fun and partially due to allergies. I had a neighbor say "You're allowed to do that?" with total disbelief. I also make bread (not on the same day), and had the same reaction.
I get the same reaction -- I homebrew my own beer and mead. It's fun, and much cheaper to make yourself if you like specialty or hoppy beers. (If you like Bud Miller Coors, don't bother, you can't compete on those economics).
I've been asked, if everyone brewed their own beer, "wouldn't that hurt American jobs"?
I'm convinced that 90% of America is incapable of critical thinking, and if you could get them to watch movies like Brazil or Dr. Strangelove or The Mist.. they would NOT get the irony. Another 5% would get it but pretend otherwise, knowing it would be dangerous to irritate a mob. I'm also convinced this explains the popularity of Fox News: catering to the lowest denominator... at least until the economic shit hit the fan.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't bring about a free society by increasing oppression. Criminals are an excuse for oppression, but they are not a _reason_ for it.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Please emphasise "enforcement". The police are not there to prevent law breaking, merely to apprehend those who do. THAT is the premise of civilised society, not enforcement before the fact. The mass murderer must have already murdered for the police to chase and charge on those grounds. To expect or allow them to proceed before the crime has been committed is oppression.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Chicken or the egg situation. Sure, it is that way now, but that is probably because if you break one law, you will probably break another.
Would the situation be the same if you did not have to break a law to sell drugs in the first place?
I would be willing to bet that during prohibition that 90% of alcohol sellers were "nefarious and commit[ed] other crimes as well". However, now that it is legal to sell alcohol, I'd also be willing to be that most of them are not.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Informative)
As for your definition of oppression, you have that completely backwards as the oppression is an action of one being on an another. One cannot oppress his or herself. Anarchy may LEAD to oppression when one person or group begins forcing another to do something against their will, but Anarchy in its purist form is the exact opposite of oppression. I think a more appropriate word for your definition would be detrimental or damaging. Law enforcement uses a monopoly of force to oppress certain targets, since Oppression is "using power to empower and/or privilege a group at the expense of disempowering, marginalizing, silencing, and subordinating another". Arresting someone is directly oppression. It may be helpful to society to do so, and anarchy would then be detrimental to society and humanity.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you can thank the drug warriors for our loss of rights. We drug users are simply engaging in our right to pursue happiness. Nobody has a right to decide what does and doesn't go into my body except for me.
The intense violence and total terror you see, is the result not of drugs, but of a black market run rampant. No society in history has ever gotten rid of drug use. We can't even keep drugs out of maximum security prisons, what makes you think we can keep drugs out of a free society? Do you honestly think the society would still be free if we did? Of course not. The solution, as with alcohol, is regulation not prohibition.
Though, I must say, excellent troll. I almost believed you believe that garbage.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
None of these solutions really work very well as shown by the pretty much free reign drugs have had since the 1950s in the US.
As opposed to the "War on Drugs" that began in the '80s? Nancy Reagan, et al, right? Since we started that program, drug use has almost completely disappeared!
Oh, wait...
Sorry, I'm with Hatta. Even though I've never used anything stronger than alcohol, nor do I have any desire to do so, I think the U.S.' position on, ummm, "recreational pharmaceuticals" is just plain stupid.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
These regulation would also prevent you from putting whatever you want into other people's bodies, with or without their consent.
I should hope so. Nobody deserves to be drugged without their consent. IMO, that's as bad as rape, and should be treated just as harshly.
Another problem is addictive personalities are going to be addicted. Period. Once there is an available supply the addiction kicks in.
Supply is always available. In fact, it's easier for a 15 year old to get illegal drugs today than it is for them to get a beer. The black market doesn't check IDs. Regulate drugs, and fewer kids will get them, and we'll end up with fewer addicts.
Societal norms, "morals" and fear of being ostracized prevents all of the addictive personalities from obtaining their first hit today.
Nonsense. Anyone who wants drugs can get them today. Nobody out there is waiting for crack to be legalized just to go have a hit.
Erase that and we will likely have vastly larger numbers of people that are going to be serious, full-time drug users with no possibility of contributing to society.
Addicts and users of most drugs have no problem contributing to society. It's only when you stigmatize them as criminals, and refuse to let them contribute to society that they stop. Look at all the caffeine and nicotine addicts around, they have no trouble contributing to society. Look at Dr. William Halsted, one of the founders of Johns Hopkins, he had a successful career in surgery all while maintaining himself on morphine. Look at the results of heroin maintenance studies in europe.
The problem with addiction isn't the addiction in itself. It's the things people have to do to maintain their addiction. When they can just go to the clinic and get a fix, they don't have to spend half the day scraping up money for a fix, and the other half the day waiting for their man. When they don't have the stigma of criminality over their heads, they can get an honest job and earn a decent living. When the price of their fix isn't marked up several orders of magnitude because of the black market, they don't have to steal to afford their habit.
All that said, methamphetamine is a very hard problem. I am not sure how to deal with that one best. Every other drug can be made less harmful by being regulated, since the greatest portion of harm comes from its legal status and not pharmacological effects. Meth has much worse pharmacological effects than most drugs, but I still think we'd be better off treating meth users as sick instead of criminal.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
addictive personalities are going to be addicted. Period.
Exactly. So why are we wasting our time, money and freedom trying to stop them?
Societal norms, "morals" and fear of being ostracized prevents all of the addictive personalities from obtaining their first hit today.
No, it quite obviously does not.
Freely distribute drugs to drive the prices down?
Most drugs are cheap. No need to drive the prices down, they'll plummet all by themselves.
There can be no regulation - regulation would prevent you from putting whatever you want into your body.
Regulation is necessary to protect the innocent, not the drug (ab)user. You can pretty much kill your last brain cell with alcohol. There's no regulation against that. Regulation is that you are not allowed to drive drunk. Regulation is that you can't advertise alcoholic beverages to underage audiences.
Personally I abstain from drugs. I don't drink, I don't smoke. I don't like it when people use drugs around me and I tell them to stub out the cigarette if they smoke in non-smoking areas. I am all for regulation of drug marketing and drug use in public, including alcohol and nicotine. But as much as I would like people to come to their senses and stop using drugs altogether, I believe that as a society we're better of with regulated drug use instead of prohibition. The negative effects of prohibition far outweigh the loss of productivity from the relatively few users whom we lose to their addiction.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Punishing someone after the fact doesn't erase the harm their crime may have caused. This isn't a problem of holding people accountable for their negative actions, it's for preventing those actions in the first place.
All perfectly true, but you are discounting the harm caused by the prevention itself. In place of the possibility -- I'll even grant you the probability -- of future harm caused by the actions of others you would substitute the certainty of present harm caused by your own actions. The relative risk of two different kinds of harm is a subjective matter. If this subjective valuation can be used to justify the use of force against a non-aggressor then any other subjective valuation can as well. The law must be impartial and objective to be meaningful; the only alternative under a universal ethic is everyone legally employing force against anyone else whenever they feel like it.
I find it moral to allow proportionately different punishments for actions that offer statistical likelihood of harm. Those are personal values.
They cease to be mere "personal values" when you use them to justify the use of force against others. I, for one, will not accept anything less than a rational and objective argument logically distinguishing your actions from those of the (potential) criminals you seek to punish. If you cannot make such a distinction then your actions are criminal, regardless of their intended effect. Forget subjective morality; as you say, neither of us is likely to convince the other to switch sides. Just answer this: why shouldn't I consider you just another common criminal? How are your actions any different from theirs?
You claim that some individuals under the influence of certain drugs are statistically likely to commit unspecified crimes; for the sake of argument I will assume that this is true, and that the likelihood is 100%. To prevent the possibility of such crimes you propose to prohibit the manufacture, sale, possession, and/or use of such drugs. To effect such a prohibition would require the use of force sufficient to overcome any resistance, including loss of property, incarceration, physical injury, and potentially death. If you fine someone to prevent a potential theft, or injure someone to prevent a potential assault, or kill someone to prevent a potential murder, then your actions are objectively worse than those you seek to prevent.
It is instructive to look at the requirements for the justified use of force in self-defense, which include (a) the presence of an immediate threat; (b) no lesser use of force available to effectively mitigate that threat; and (c) the risk of irreparable harm. In some cases you have (c), e.g. murder would be irreparable, but you do not have (a) or (b). The threat is not immediate, but rather a remote future possibility, and there are other ways to mitigate the threat which do not involve the use of force at all: personal persuasion, social pressure, individual preventative defensive measures, etc. The use of preemptive force in this case is not justified.
All this assumes that there is a one-to-one correlation between drug use and crime, and that your measures are effective in stopping the use of drugs, as opposed to merely driving it into hiding. Neither assumption is particularly likely.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Insightful)
In a free society, we should be free to make the choice of what we want to put into our bodies. It's hopeless for the government to try to regulate such a frivilous thing. If the war on drugs was gone, and replaced with an honest education campaign (something that goes farther then saying "drugs are bad"), along with the government being able to oversee the production and distribution of these drugs, they would be safer. There wouldn't be the risk of spreading AIDS through needles, or having your substance cut with something else resulting in overdose. Many illegal drugs, such as cannabis, mushrooms, and LSD are relatively safe and I don't think exposing them to our culture would have to much of a negative effect - as long as people are well educated.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think exposing them to our culture would have to much of a negative effect - as long as people are well educated.
And there's the problem.... Stupid people will continue to be stupid.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad thing is people actually believe what you say.
And it's even more depressing how easy it would be to solve all those problems.
If I was currently selling illegal drugs in the US and wanted to continue to rake in giant piles of money I'd be making political donations to whoever was pushing the "tough on drugs" laws with a little note along the lines of "keep up the good work mate".
Why? Well if it was legalised I'd be ruined!
Who was hurt most by the ending of prohibition? The mob of course, they wanted it to never end.
Legal distributors selling safer cheaper drugs would push them out of the market entirely.
The best thing that can happen for them is for a competitor to be busted, they can just expand into their former market overnight. Sure they might be busted themselves but the organisations which survive and grow will be the ones which are best at avoiding getting caught.
I've heard that during prohibition foreign alcohol producers quietly lobbied to keep prohibition since consumption didn't go down, the American producers were pushed out of business and import taxes went the way of the morning mist.
Few people seem to be able to graps this, drug laws just create a situation where there's a group of people distributing drugs with a large financial incentive to expand their market.
Want to get rid of the drug dealers? It only takes a few easy and cheap steps.
Step 1: Provide free high quality drugs to people already addicted with no criminal penalties or consequences to people who come forward and ask for them.
Step 2: You're basicly done, you've knocked the bottom out of the drug buisness, you are now the distributor and you have no reason to try to get more people addicted. Drug dealers can no longer make any profit out of getting kids addicted since they just go to you when it starts costing money.
Much much much much cheaper than the massive failure that the war on drugs is.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is it so hard for legalization advocates to understand that the war on drugs is really a war against drug use, and not drug sales. Eliminating drug dealers is supposedly a means to eliminating drug use. Any plan to eliminate dealers that involves users getting their drugs from somewhere else defeats the intent.
(Please note that this post doesn't advocate one position or the other. It merely points out the flaw in the parent poster's logic.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If they step in and jack up the price then you're not following the simple steps.
Where did I say anything about having drug companies come in with high prices?
And they'd have problems with that since they have no patent on pot: other drug companies would just sell for cheaper until the price was just above the cost of production.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as home chemistry is concerned you can thank illegal drug users for the need to clamp down on lab equipment and supplies. The sad truth is that all of us need to help ferret out illegal drug users and get them put away or whatever if we intend to live in a free society. Perhaps people in some areas can't see the problem. They only need have lived in an area that has fallen to drugs to understand the intense violence and total terror that such a neighborhood can come to when drugs run rampant.
WTF?
Illegal drug users aren't doing much of anything to hurt anyone else. They may very well fry their own brains... And might, while under the influence, do some harm to folks around them. But I doubt if it is any more significant than the damage that alcoholics do on a daily basis.
Illegal drug users aren't to blame for this. The response to these illegal drug users is.
By cracking down so hard on illegal drugs we've turned it into an insanely profitable industry. That's why there's so much money and violence surrounding the drug trade. How much violence do you see surrounding the alcohol trade these days? When's the last time you saw a shootout in the street over a six-pack of beer? Take a look at what was going on during prohibition and you'd see a very different picture.
There's no way that taking away liberties is going to increase freedom. By telling folks that "all of us need to help ferret out illegal drug users" you're turning everyone against their neighbors. You won't have to worry about the US Government spying on your anymore, you'll have to worry about your next-door neighbor instead. How is that a step in the right direction? How does that increase freedom?
No amount of intrusion, snooping, or policing is going to stamp out illegal drug use. No society in history has been able to pull that off. Just like abortion and prostitution - it is here to stay, whether we like it or not.
All we do by criminalizing these drugs is push them underground, make it more expensive to traffic in them... Which raises the prices... Which makes it more profitable... All of which eventually leads to people deciding that a pile of drugs, valued at several million dollars, is worth a few human lives.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Think of it this way. I'm a pilot; I fly airplanes for fun. If I live on a 40-acre farm, it is legal and reasonable for me to build an airstrip in my back yard and fly my airplane off of it. However, even if I had a lot large enough to fly an airplane from I would have the local P.D and the FAA knocking on my door if I were to try that in the city where I live.
By the same token, while it might be reasonable to work with highly volatile chemicals in a rural lab, it might not be so reasonable to do something while living in a duplex in town. That doesn't necessarily mean that the sale of such chemicals should be restricted, however.
The real issue is that people tend to be afraid of things they don't understand. Most people in the U.S. no longer are interested in science, and are therefore likely to think that people who enjoy experimenting with chemistry are "up to no good." That's a very, very sad thing, IMHO.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad example... (Score:5, Insightful)
Charles Goodyear figured out how to vulcanize rubber with the same stove that his wife used to bake the family's bread.
You should never use the same equipment for your chemistry as for your other household things. If you're going to do chemistry at home, do it safely. This means having a separate (well-ventilated) room for your work, and using separate ovens, microwave, glassware, and other equipment for your work. Chemical contamination is a real threat. You may look at a chemical reaction and deem all the reactants and products to be safe... but if you make a mistake you may contaminate a room/oven/glassware with a more dangerous side-product. And you do not want to be then ingesting these contaminants (worse, you do not want to expose your family and friends).
So, like I said, be safe and use dedicated equipment for your experiments. (And don't brush your teeth with the toothbrush you use to clean your test tubes.)
Re:Bad example... (Score:5, Funny)
You should never use the same equipment for your chemistry as for your other household things.
Too true. With some of the additives they use these days, the risk of your food contaminating your delicate experiments is just too great. If, say, you got some of that melamine-adulterated Chinese milk mixed up with your reactants, it could really screw up the results!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know if you knew this or not, but that's not even a tongue-in-cheek example -- milk powder can be used in polymerase chain reactions (PCR), and is almost certainly the protein source of choice for home molecular biologists.
Re:Bad example... (Score:5, Funny)
You know it is people like you that have created this scarcity of mutant superheroes.
"Hamfisted" is a good description. (Score:3, Informative)
More of the same sad shit... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't let people experiment with stuff that they might be able to make a bomb out of, or a meth lab because we law enforcement agents can't tell the difference, and besides, only terrorists and criminals are interested in chemical reactions. right?
That says nothing about the fact that even if it is illegal, terrorists, criminals, and drug czar wannabes will still have their labs. This can only hurt the honest law abiding citizenry.
It's about time we had much less government interference, and more government support of engineering and entrepreneurship in these United States. Do you have any idea what it costs for a safe chem storage locker? If price is not enough, they put regulations out to make it near impossible to do simple things, never mind experiment with any chemicals.
Why would someone want to do that? Hmmm perhaps you might be looking for a heat transfer fluid for a closed system solar power electric generator. Perhaps you are experimenting to find the optimum chemical recipe for heat transfer fluid on a home/earth heating/cooling system for your area. Perhaps you are trying to create a cheap cleaning solution that is environmentally friendly. There are hundreds of reasons that someone might want to set up a chemistry lab at home for hobby use. I mean seriously, if you find a cheap clean easy method to convert old motor oil to some sort of valid fuel... go for it. Perhaps you find the exact chemical soup required for quickly biodegrading rubbish or plastics in a quick ecologically sound manner.
The roomba did not come from government research facilities or even Boeing or Lockheed-Martin. Why should we expect that all chemical discoveries would come from commercial enterprises? That's just fucking stupid.
People fear what they don't understand (Score:3, Insightful)
America's culture of the 21st century is a culture of fear. People fear what they don't understand and because of the modern age of fear selling tactics. If people actually learned something in schools instead of public school being a social experiment, then the public might understand intelligent hobbyists such as this.
Instead, the media has labeled every science hobbyist as a mass murderer waiting fora chance to unleash their techno-death on the world!!! Mwuhahahah!!! Then it will be robot apocalypse!! Dogs and cats living together!! Mass hysteria!! YES!!!!
Potential weapon (Score:3, Funny)
But of course, is legal, even is a constitutional right or something similar, to own weapons, things that are only meant to kill, in the US.
Irony kills too, lets ban it.
Not just for home chemists (Score:5, Insightful)
Without wishing to sound like a libertarian, this is true for a great many things that are regulated - from the outside those regulations either a) are totally uninteresting, or b) seem pretty reasonable. But when you're on the inside of whatever activity is being regulated it's often the case that you can see how stupid/harmful regulation is.
It's not unlike watching a news report on TV about something you're familiar with. You see how badly they butcher the subject, and then start wondering what they do to subjects you don't know about...
Get The Golden Book Of Chemistry Experiments PDF (Score:5, Informative)
There we go again ... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's quite possible to make explosives and poisons using only household chemicals. *sighs* All it takes is a few weeks of study on the Internet, a decent library, and some systematic note-taking.
But you can't stop that sort of thing without prohibiting oft-used household chemicals. So it's not widely talked about.
The general public hasn't got a clue about what is or isn't dangerous, and neither do most of the Authorities. Starting with the police.
It's long since ceased to be about ensuring safety for neighbours and society at large, it's simply cover-your-backside regulation on part of otherwise clueless officials.
It's Ok that something's done to prevent people from building complete plastique factories and amphetamine laboratories in their basements, but with a little common sense and some understanding of chemicals it's s completely doable to safeguard the neighbourhood.
Register people with home laboratories if you must, but leave them alone. Like HAM radio amateurs.
There are severe problems 'hobby' chemistry... (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was in High School, I set up a full lab, with the full array of chemicals like Sulfuric Acid, Hydrazine, Ethyl Acetoacetate etc etc. I learned a tremendous amount and made some interesting chemicals, but in hindsight I have serious reservations:
1) Most people will have a very hard time coping with hazardous waste in a proper fashion, and the temptation to cut corners will be irresistible.
2) If you look at the current state of chemical research, you'll see that the home hobbyist *HAS NO CHANCE* of keeping pace with a modern research lab. Palladium catalysts? Glove Boxes? Preparative Chromatography? NMR? Organometallic chemistry? Suzuki couplings? If you want to advance the state of the art and make meaningful contributions you need heavy tools nowadays. Yes, you might find something interesting, but most all of the easy chemicals have been made.
3) The risk of fire, explosion and toxic contamination is very real. Someone trying to distill a liter of THF in their garage is asking for trouble, and if my neighbor was doing this I would be very concerned.
If someone wants to spend $600,000 and lease space in an industrial park, more power to 'em, but it doesn't sound like a hobby at that point.
I eventually packed everything up and took it to a 'hazardous material collection day' run by the local fire department. They were quite surprised, and it all went off to a HazMat landfill.
Stupid laws, stupid lawmakers (Score:3, Insightful)
I must have been 7 or 8 when I got my first "ChemCraft" chemistry set for Christmas. By the time I was in Junior High, my best friend had a well-equipped chem lab in his basement, and I had one in an unused upstairs bedroom (my father even ran in gas for my bunsen burner). We used to make regular trips (driven by parents, of course) to a local science supply business to purchase glassware, chemicals, and such.
Now we have stupid paranoid lawmakers passing stupid paranoid laws, and even stupider fogbound bureaucratic government agencies enforcing the laws in a totally ham-handed manner.
Aaaarrrrgh!
Is there **ANY** way to get rid of all this idiotic nonsense?
(I could suggest that we elect Libertarians to **ALL** public and lawmaking posisitons, but I have a feeling that's not going to happen ... anyone have a better idea?)
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The top part is a range. The baking part is an oven. The entity as a whole is a stove.
Of course, you could also bake on the range, but that's not as easy as just figuring out which part is the stove.
Re:Bake on a stove? (Score:4, Funny)
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you could also bake on the range, but that's not as easy as just figuring out which part is the stove.
I guess you meant figuring out which part is the OVEN. :-) BOTH parts are the stove. But actually thanks for clarifying -- I always thought the range was the stove and the oven was not. And can you really bake on a range? My cooking world is being turned upside down this morning!
Put a lid on a pot. Bake inside. Use a thicker pot for more temperature uniformity. Use a rack to keep your baked goods off the very hot bottom surface.
Re:Bake on a stove? (Score:4, Funny)
Won't the bread come out a bit smelly though?
Tom...
Re:Bake on a stove? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Regulations (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Regulations (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Regulations ... don't work and cannot work. (Score:5, Insightful)
The irresponsible people are allowed to buy incredible amounts of extremely hazardous materials like fireworks, while many chemicals that require qualifications, to even know what to do with them, are heavily restricted.
But then, someone wishing to do harm to others, can cause a lot of damage with just some gasoline and a lighter. The chemical isn't the danger, its the actions and intentions of the people using it.
Therefore the solution isn't to be found in ever more extra controls and banning parts of chemistry, its to be found in psychology. (We have enough controls on chemistry to avoid accidents, but ever more controls can never stop some people causing intentional harm towards others).
The answer to this problem is actually easier, than the relentless government solution of continued prohibition, of anything else they detect that can be used to harm others. There will always be things that can be used to cause harm to others. There will also always be new things found that can cause harm to others. Prohibition will never work. Its always going to be less than required. Plus they cannot block everything. (Even a house brick can cause harm to others, so they cannot ban house bricks). The solution of prohibition of chemicals and even at times, knowledge itself cannot work.
Psychology shows why people cause harm to others, for their own gain. The harm is caused intentional, there is a reason why they choose to cause harm to others. Only when enough people learn how to recognize the psychology of the ones who cause harm towards others, can we finally move towards a world, without fear of people causing intentional harm to others.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The old saying "the more you know, the less that you know that you know" doesn't apply to everyone, like this guy:
http://blogs.kansascity.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/08/03/boyscout.jpg [kansascity.com]
Sure, David Hahn was delving into radioactivity, but same principals apply to goofballs playing with chemistry.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292111,00.html [foxnews.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn [wikipedia.org]
Unfortunately, it's idiots lik
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Remember, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate!
P.S. The irresponsible ones will blow themselves up anyway. Good for keeping full fire department employment.
Now all the tinkering is just done in labs that have access to "controlled" substances. It has the same effect. We have regulations to stop people who are a few neurons shy of a full brain (probably from playing with too many chemicals) harming themselves or others. There are many responsible people who can tinker with chemicals but there are many irresponsible ones who would end up seriously harming themselves or others, accidentally or on purpose.
Re:Regulations (Score:5, Insightful)
There are many responsible people who can tinker with chemicals but there are many irresponsible ones who would end up seriously harming themselves or others, accidentally or on purpose.
And yet we let damn near everyone drive.
Re:Regulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse yet, we let them pro-create. Protect them from blowing themselves up and let them create little replicas of themselves. The antitheses of evolution.
Re:Regulations (Score:5, Insightful)
No! The only way you could have the antithesis of evolution is if the rules of the universe were changed such that the things more likely to survive became less numerous over time.
What you are doing is projecting some kind of value judgment onto a natural process, which should be rejected by the logical mind. If you're so concerned about the unintelligent procreating over the more intellectual people in an overthrow of evolution, perhaps you should consider what larger, smarter species various insects might have driven to destruction over the last 400 million years.
That said, human society is about more than just natural selection; we have the reasoned ability to choose what is better long-term, rather than simply allowing immediate survival to determine everything.
Sorry for the rant, but if you let these ideas stick, they tend to spread.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You've got that backward. Evolution is never long term. The only things that survive are those that survi
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Re:Regulations (Score:4, Funny)
My regime proposes that, if elected in to power, the following regulations will be put in to place:
1) All citizens will be reversibly sterilized at puberty.
2) Reproduction will be licensed. The license can be obtained upon successfully passing IQ and parental competency tests. A credit check will also be required to insure that only citizens financially able to care for offspring will be able to reproduce.
3) In the event that parents later prove to be incapable of raising a child, their offspring will be confiscated and raised in a sanitary state-run facility. In this event the parents' breeding license will be permanently revoked.
My regime feels that these policies are reasonable, will end all issues with teen pregnancy and abortion and should be viewed favorably by the population at large.
Re:Regulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you suggesting that these regulations have no effect on the potential for people to discover new things?
I'd argue that irresponsibility can't be fixed by any amount of regulation. Attempts to do so only make it more difficult for the responsible to contribute to society in positive ways.
Re:Regulations (Score:5, Informative)
There are very few such labs which allow "tinkering". Such labs tend to be run either by for-profit entities which expect you to do profitable work, or research insttitutions which expect you to do work which will get you grants.
In any case, the authorites come down even on non-controlled substances, as the article indicates. What chemists consider "dangerous" isn't the same as what the authorites do. From the article, one Nobel Prize winning chemist talking about his home lab: "I don't have anything that is dangerous in my lab. I have many chemicals in small amounts--salts and buffers" as well as some organic solvents, such as methanol, Shimomura says."
Methanol is both highly toxic and highly flammable. That's what the authorities would call "dangerous" if they raided his lab (though they wouldn't blink at gasoline). I'm guessing many of those salts are at least poisonous.
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You can find methanol [mypianoshop.com] - and a bunch of other toxic, flammable solvents - at a good hardware or auto supply store. Most gas-line dryers are methanol. Just keep your methanol in a Heet [goldeagle.com] bottle and you won't get a second look.
Re:Regulations (Score:4, Insightful)
Right- hes a first tier citizen. The rest of down here are the ones that have to worry.
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This might make sense except that restrictions on who can drive are a lot less restrictive. Even though you'd have to be manufacturing high explosives to get anywhere as
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similar to hobbyist game makers of just 20, 30 years ago, and how there is no way they could compete on the same footing with modern mainline game studios and the high end graphical renderings they crank out
Good analogy.
Difference is, game hobbyists are still able to tinker today with the technology that was considered state-of-the-art 30 years ago, and that tinkering is still producing fruit. If you'd asked Atari's hardware designers in 1977 whether the 2600 VCS console would ever be able to play a clip o
Re:while historical chemical advances (Score:5, Interesting)
Most recently, a man fooling around with a home chemistry set discovered that gold flakes of a certain size heat up in the presence of low energy microwaves. Yes all metals do this, but the gold particles heated up at such a low energy that you could swallow the gold and get your body exposed to microwaves that do no significant damage except to the parts of your body that are touching the gold. As it was already known that tumors tend to accumulate heavy metals, it created a cancer treatment.
The original discovery was done within the last 10 years, no 20, and was done at someone's home, not in a lab.
Re:while historical chemical advances (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but that's got to be one of the most naive things I've ever heard. Considering all polymers, there are arbitrarily many different permutations of the known elements available in a pure substance and then considering all mixtures thereof we have more different concoctions than can be enumerated. While certainly the properties of many of these have been well-understood or could be inferred from known experiment, there are many that await only someone with imagination to discover and apply.
Case in point: http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2005-11/11-year-quest-create-disappearing-colored-bubbles [popsci.com]
Reading your analogy about games, http://www.newgrounds.com/ [newgrounds.com] might also be an eye-opener. Many of those games are whipped up by talented hobbyists but still get a lot of play.
~Ben
Never heard of Zubbles? (Score:5, Insightful)
After an unexplained breakthrough in his kitchen, he was able to produce blue bubbles.
Popular Science named them the "Innovation of the Year" for 2005, and Reader's Digest said they were one of the "Best Innovations" of the year in 2006.[1]
I suspect you are trolling, but the mods giving you +5 Interesting have apparently bought your post whole.
Re:while historical chemical advances (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The combinatorial space in science (and in the production of chemicals especially) is absolutely massive. There is no practical way for chemists to explore it all, so of course they make educated guesses about what is both (a) reasonably easy to make; and (b) of some practical value. However because the combinatorial space is large, there is still plenty of uncharted territory for others to explore. Random fortuitous discoveries are certainly a part of science.
2. Hobbyists can afford to do research that is risky and has no obvious application (I mean "risky" in the sense of "it might not work or lead anywhere" and not in the sense of "it might be dangerous"). They don't have to satisfy funding agencies or pragmatic concerns. They can just explore. Thus they can sometimes pursue crazy lines of inquiry that established scientists wouldn't touch.
3. There is such a thing as having your creativity inhibited by institutionalized concepts. A hobbyist isn't as restricted by the "well-established-rules" of the field, and thus may make creative discoveries others would have missed. (This is rare, by the way: the vast majority of science comes from pushing along using well-established procedures and concepts... but rare "out of the box" discoveries are also important in science.)
4. Doing chemistry (or science in general) on a budget, using only commonly-available equipment, can actually force specific kinds of discoveries. Specifically, it helps to discover things that are cheap (which industry loves!) since it can be done with commodity chemicals and tools. (Who knows, there may be a cheap way to make a better antifreeze using only what is in your house and back-yard.) So hobbyists actually have a chance to discover things that will actually make an impact on industry (whereas the chance that they discover something fundamentally new, without modern diagnostic tools, is slimmer).
5. Finally, even if the hobbyist doesn't actually discover anything new or interesting (which is, by far, the most likely outcome), it has a positive effect on the participants. The people doing it are doing so for fun (presumably), and that in itself is reason enough. Moreover it may be the catalyst for someone to go into science professionally. The ability to make kids enthusiastic about science should not be overlooked. Like most hobbies, hobby-science is more about the process than the end result.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1. I agree with you 100%. That we have our 'folding@home' programs is just one aspect that demonstrates that chemistry is a field that has so many possible permutations it is simply not possible to know them all. Perhaps a way to view it is similar to someone cataloging species. Sure, it may not mean much that someone discovered the 4000th species of ant in the Amazon, but now we know that such an ant exists. A chemist might not discover a 'useful' chemical or process, but it all gets added to our sum
Re:while historical chemical advances (Score:5, Insightful)
Another problem is the threat that chemists can pose to themselves and others. For every Goodyear who succeeded, how many unknown chemists ended up with poisoning, burns, cancer, or other damage to the local neighborhood?
Ok, so you had unknown chemists with poisoning, burns and cancer. The fact that they remain unknown means that they didn't really pose a risk. How often do you hear stories of some home chemist doing something that required the evacuation of his neighbor's house, let alone the entire neighborhood?
Now, how often do we hear about car accidents that result in an 80 car pileup and 10-15 people killed?
My hobby of electronics and electrical work is far more likely to kill or maim someone than a chemist.
Re:I can see the the other side as well. (Score:4, Funny)
What kind of search engine kills people when you do a search?
Re:I can see the the other side as well. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this hypothetical idiot making nitroglycerin in a packed elevator? Do you have any real idea how much high explosive it takes to cause the kind of mayhem you're envisioning?
You want to see something that will really freak you out?
Go read up on Tannerite [tannerite.com]. This stuff is loads of fun, 50 state legal, and available over the internet. What you'll find even more amazing is that as far as I know, not a single person has died from it's use.
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I discovered the uselessness of nitrogen triiodide as a high explosive in my home lab.
Other findings:
- It will explode if left underwater, but can be kept for long periods of time under ammonia
- It's difficult to get a good report because you can't clump it- the crystals are continuously letting off little explosions as it dries
- Clumping kitty litter gets around this nicely
- After very long periods of time under ammonia the crystals change color from black to a very bright orange- for reasons that are not
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's one thing if a city or HOA wants to limit the kind of chemicals and experiments people can play with in their jurisdiction, but blanket federal laws about it are a different story because they affect the guy living 50 miles from a paved road just a much as someone living in a 200 foot^2 apartment in Manhattan.
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I hate to tell you this, but killing 20 people is already illegal. I know it's a shocker, but it's true.
Now if that same idiot decided to get up to 60 in his car and swerve onto the sidewalk, he could also kill those 20 people. Or if he decided to grab *insert any tool here* and go on a rampage, well, it might not be 20, or it might be more.
In no instance will any new laws keep someone who wishes to cause harm from doing so. Perhaps it may impact the scale, but there is as great a chance that it would re
Make it from pee! (Score:4, Interesting)
http://yarchive.net/explosives/nitrates.html [yarchive.net]
Re:Have you seen Breaking Bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
I grew up with a heroin lab on one side and a dog owner on the other. The dog owner was a constant irritation from day one, with the dog barking at all hours and crapping on the lawn. The heroin lab were decent neighbors who didn't really affect us until the night the cops came. Make all the meth/heroin/whatever you want, but keep your blasted dogs away, I say!
Re:Have you seen Breaking Bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except it wasn't chemical labs passing these laws, most labs want to decrease the regulations so they don't have to waste their time following them when they don't make sense. Also as a general rule, most chemical companies have an interest in innovators at home. It seems to me that most research that goes on in those labs are things the average home chemist wouldn't be able to do in their garage. How many garages have NMR capabilities?
It seems to me then that competition from home labs is pretty limited. Anything you DID discover in your basement that would compete with a major chemical lab would probably be very interesting to that chemical lab, because they could replicate it themselves for cheaper.
Anyway, your conspiracy theory is a bit ridiculous.
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Hum no not really. Regulations are always supported by insiders as a way to protect themselves from outsiders. The existing corporations have political power, the unborn competitors don't. Generally speaking, the state is a system by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.