Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Bill Nye the Science Guy


With the cold temperatures hitting the nation, many people decided to take science into their own hands.  Literally, with boiling hot water.  I'll admit, I watched in awe as boiling water was thrown into the air and turned into an instant solid and had a gaseous quality (maybe it does turn into a gas... I didn't look really too into the science behind it). 

It really brought me back to the days of Bill Nye the Science Guy making science fun and something you would want to try at home.  Personally, I'm a huge fan of science education and it's great that people were trying to enjoy the cold rather than stewing from cabin fever.  This was all the buzz with my co-workers.  We had a staff dinner Monday night and post dinner, a few of my colleagues took left over boiling water from our taco buffet and brought them outside to demonstrate this scientific phenomenon.  It. Was. Awesome.

The following day, my social media feed displayed countless videos from my "friends" or followers of this home science experiment.  Then, I saw the best article of all - pleading to ask Americans to stop throwing boiling water into the air. Or at least making sure you're down wind when doing so.  There were countless tweets displaying photos where this experiment went all wrong.  Boiling water causes third degree burns.  You know what this taught me?  Keep the science experiments to the professionals.  Or at least make it a habit to test wind direction before throwing something potentially harmful into the air.


Edited by: Ms. Beth Mannella, esq.