Be prepared for the Next Big Backlash in school: no explosives! Or, as these things usually go, nothing that anyone could construe as, turn into, or somehow confuse with an explosive. And it’s all (or initially) this guy’s fault:
David Pieski, 42, used an overhead projector in class to give instructions in making explosives to students at Freedom High School, including advising them to use an electric detonator to stay clear from the blast, an Orange County sheriff’s arrest report said.
In Pieski’s classroom in Orlando, authorities found a book labeled “Demo,” which includes the chemical breakdown for a powerful explosive, the arrest report said.
[…] Pieski was charged with possessing or discharging a destructive device and culpable negligence. Pieski, who was booked into the Orange County Jail on Monday and released on $1,000 bail, declined to comment.
Pieski told investigators he detonated chemicals in a coffee can by a ball field four times for his students, the sheriff’s office said. He said he did this as a chemistry project to show a reaction rate, the arrest report said. […] Pieski guided investigators to an unlocked metal cabinet in the back of a classroom, where there was “a can of black powder stored next to other chemicals,” the sheriff’s office said.
Assuming we’re talking about actual black powder black powder (as opposed to “a black powdery substance”) it’s clear that this guy is, in fact, a danger to himself and his students.
But sure as shooting, it won’t stop there. I predict a new wave of school purges and regs and crack-downs, as administrators fearing law suits and parents fearing Little Billy Learning Something Bad And Getting Hurt make any sort of rapidly reacting chemical that could, in sufficient qualities, produce enough energy to make a noise that could frighten the little ones into a fireable/expellable offense.
For example, when I was in high school chemistry, I remember going out onto the quad with the chemistry teacher and watching as he put a small dollop of sodium metal into a coffee can of water. Rapid reaction and boom and boy that sure was educational (and fun). Bets that legitimate, reasonably safe, and nothing-like-teaching-kids-details-about-detonators lesson plans like that will now be a thing of the past?
(Mutter, mutter, mutter …)