Senator Blumenthal Blames TikTok... Due To A Popular And Widely Championed Science Experiment Gone Wrong

from the why-do-you-hate-science? dept

Senator Richard Blumenthal seems to fill our pages with every possible moral panic about an internet he doesn't understand, but on which he's made a name over-reacting to. This goes back over a decade, honestly, since well before he was even a Senator.

For the last few months he's been really ramping up the moral panic about TikTok, complaining about various trends on TikTok and demanding execs testify before him. The latest is that he has sent a letter to TikTok's CEO, Shou Zi Chew, demanding an explanation of how a kid in Connecticut (Blumenthal's state) was burned by messing up a science experiment called the "Whoosh Bottle Experiment." Lots of news sites -- and Blumenthal in his letter -- imply that "The Whoosh Bottle Experiment" is some sort of TikTok thing.

I write to express my grave concerns over TikTok’s failure to ensure the safety of the users on its platform. Time and again, TikTok users—including children—are seriously injured attempting to emulate videos they watch. TikTok must do better to enforce its own community guidelines and promote the safety and best interests of all users on its platform.

Last week, a twelve-year-old boy in East Haven, Connecticut, was hospitalized after suffering severe burns. He had watched a video on TikTok of the “Whoosh Bottle Experiment,” where alcohol is poured in a plastic bottle set aflame to hear a “whoosh” sound as the alcohol burns off. Because alcohol is highly flammable, its mishandling can inflict serious injury and lead to devastating consequences. TikTok knows of this danger: multiple people were injured in a previous trend to draw shapes in rubbing alcohol and ignite them.

Thing is, the Whoosh Bottle Experiment is not "a TikTok thing" it's a science thing. It's listed as a useful science experiment/demonstration for students on tons of educational resources, including the Royal Society of Chemistry, ChemEdX, STEM Learning and many, many other respected educational resources. Atlas Obscura referred to it years ago as "science's coolest fire experiment," noting dozens of science teachers doing demonstrations of the Whoosh Bottle Experiment.

Now, yes, this is the kind of experiment that should involve adult supervision, but it's not just some dumb random "TikTok challenge" and it's ridiculous to somehow hold TikTok to blame here. There are tons of science experiments that, if done wrong, could lead to injury. Is Senator Blumenthal really saying that all such educational resources teaching such science experiments need to be taken offline?

This kind of grandstanding seems to get Blumenthal headlines, which is what he seems to care about most. And the media seems to be eating up the false claim that the Whoosh Bottle Experiment is somehow "a TikTok thing." But it's not. It's a science thing and it's utterly ridiculous that Blumenthal is blaming TikTok for that -- and that the media is aiding him in this stupid, stupid moral panic. Stick to misunderstanding "finsta," Senator. You don't need to attack cool science experiments too.

Filed Under: blame, education, liability, richard blumenthal, science experiments, stem, whoosh bottle experiment
Companies: tiktok

DailyDirt: Cheering For Mathletes

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

It's a no-brainer that math is a critically important subject. Okay, a lot of people probably don't remember much calculus from high school -- or how to do "long division" -- but the exposure to advanced math and encouraging everyone to appreciate math is still laudable. And making sure kids aren't turned off by math will hopefully lead to more people involved in STEM fields in the future.

• Amazon's Education business unit is aiming to get teachers and students to improve their math skills and attitudes towards math. This "With Math I Can" effort is an attempt to encourage girls (and boys) who aren't confident with numbers to stick with math and math-related subjects. [url]
• A study of nearly half a million boys and girls (14-16yo) from 69 countries shows that there's a negligible gender gap when it comes to math skills. A few countries favored boys over girls in math tests, but a couple of countries also had girls beating the boys. So the differences are chalked up to effort and teaching, not any innate ability differences between boys and girls. [url]
• Apparently, girls seem to do more homework and play less with computers than boys do. According to an OECD report, boys test better at math than girls in many countries -- but girls in Shanghai seem to be really good at math. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: education, homework, learning, math, stem, teaching
Companies: amazon

DailyDirt: Paper Airplanes For Fun And Profit

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If you're interested in paper planes, you could try to beat the world record for distance -- and it looks like there may be annual contests for you to compete in pretty soon. You could also try to make a paper airplane that stays aloft for the longest time. Or you could come up with your own record (most loops? most accurate landing? best tricks?). Check out some of these links if you think you could be obsessed with paper planes.. in a healthy way.

• John Collins is kickstarting a campaign to create The National Paper Airplane Contest. The competition aims to encourage kids and adults to experiment with paper airplanes and maybe learn some science and technology along the way. [url]
• The farthest flying paper airplane thrown indoors was designed and folded by John Collins. This is a short video showing how the record holding plane (aka Suzanne) is folded. [url]
• A much much longer video on how to fold the record holding paper airplane takes about half an hour to watch. If you replicate this plane AND throw it farther than the current record, Collins is offering a $1000 reward. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: competition, contests, design, education, john collins, origami, paper airplanes, paper planes, stem, suzanne, world record
Companies: kickstarter

DailyDirt: Learning How To Do Math Like A Boss

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some people claim that they are not "math people" -- that their brains just don't understand mathematics that way "normal" people are supposed to learn it. Perhaps that's true for some, but the subject of math seems to be taught in a way that tends to weed people out as concepts get more abstract. Educators are trying to figure out how to avoid making math lessons as painful as they might have been in the past (and hopefully not create any further torture with "new math" or even "newer new math"). Here are just a few links on changing the way these skills are taught.

• Math classes are usually taught as a progression of skills, starting with counting, then adding/subtraction, then multiplication/division, then algebra, maybe some geometry/trig, and ending in calculus. However, a growing trend of abolishing this artificial math progression could have toddlers learning calculus concepts -- and other "advanced" math topics -- in a non-linear order. [url]
• Psychologists see evidence that preschoolers have a natural ability to do basic algebra before they ever sit in a classroom. This ability seems to come from kids' "Approximate Number System" (ANS) or "number sense" -- which allows children to solve simple algebra problems without a systematic logic. Researchers would like to figure out how this number sense breaks down as kids go to school and appear to lose these inherent abilities. [url]
• There's a trend to try to teach *everyone* how to program, but maybe if we're really serious about doing that, we should change the way programming is done. Forcing humans to think like computers isn't going to make programming very popular, so making human-friendly programming languages might be the way to go. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: algebra, ans, approximate number system, calculus, coding, education, intuition, learning, math, number sense, preschoolers, programming, stem, teachers, teaching

DailyDirt: National Robotics Week -- Save The Bots!

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The third annual National Robotics Week is currently underway, if you didn't get the memo. The second week of April was officially designated for robotics in 2010 by House Resolution 1055. If you haven't hugged your robot today, it's about time you did, perhaps.

• A full calendar of events is available at nationalroboticsweek.org. There's something going on in every state, and you can keep up with some of the activity via Facebook. [url]
• The iRobot Corp, famous for its line of robot vacuum cleaners, is sponsoring some public awareness projects for students to get kids interested in robots and science/technology subjects. FYI, iRobot products are also serving in the military to help clear out explosives from the battlefield, so its robots don't just clean up dirt. [url]
• If you're in Florida, the University of Miami School of Law will be discussing legal and policy issues relating to robotics at its inaugural 'We Robot' conference, April 21-22. The future of lawsuits against robots covers some things you might not expect. [url]
• To discover more interesting robotics-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: education, national robotics week, policy, robots, stem
Companies: irobot