Basic Chemistry for Dummies

Periodic Table as Ring

It may seem as though we at the Antisocial Network concentrate our research on how-to articles, and that might be a fair assessment. Whether that's a cause or an effect of the frequency with which we mine the mother lode of dumbassery at eHow.com is debatable, like the chicken and egg question. In reality, we find our nominees everywhere: it's just that they're easier to find at eHow! Today, however, we head over to another primary source, HubPages.com, where we found one of our champions, 15-time winner of our signature award, holding forth on a topic about which she clearly knows nothing. It's the one and only Joan Whetzel, who today we find misinforming her readership about "The Elements of Earth's Crust."

Joanie uses about 600 words to describe, sort of, the eight most common elements found in Earth's crust. In case you've forgotten them, the eight are (in decreasing order of weight) O, Si, Al, Fe, Ca, Na, K and Mg. Whetzel provides a capsule description of each of the eight, managing, without fail, to screw up at least one detail in nearly every paragraph. Here's some of what she has to say...

First, Joan explains that, in addition to the eight she's named, "Other elements found in the crust in trace amounts include: gold, silver, copper, and uranium." Her punctuation problems notwithstanding (learn to use a semicolon, will ya, Joan?), that's 12 of the 92 naturally-occurring elements. What about the other 80 – you know, like carbon, one that's essential to life? It's rather more common than gold, silver or uranium. While technically correct, that information is pretty much worthless. OK, on to the elements. Says Joan of silicon:

"Silicone (Si): Silicon can be found in all stars including the Sun and is one of the main elements found in aerolite meteorites. Silica is found mainly in the form of silica oxides such as sand, quartz, rock crystals, amethyst, agate, flint, jasper and opals. Plant life needs the silica extracted from water as a component of their cell walls. It is also an important component of steel and carbide abrasives." Oh, so many things wrong there...  Silicone and silicon aren't the same thing... Silica is the oxide of silicon, so "silica oxides" is redundant, and makes no sense. Plus, the minerals she lists are all forms of quartz except sand, which is a grain size and not a mineral.  Silicon is not "a component" of steel or of tungsten carbide.

Joan then takes on aluminum:

"Aluminum (Al): Aluminum... is soft and malleable, making it easy to form, machine, and cast. As a soft metal, it is poor in strength by itself, but when combined with other metals (copper, magnesium, silicon, manganese) as an alloy, it becomes stronger and more useful for a number of uses ...it must be refined from bauxite (an aluminum ore) before it can be used."

More Whetzel stupidification: Being soft and malleable has nothing to do with ease of casting; that's a function of aluminum's melting point and its viscosity in liquid state "...more useful for a number of uses"? WTF? And you don't say "combined with... as an alloy," there's a perfectly good verb: to alloy. Just an FYI, Joan, much of the aluminum in the crust is in clay minerals and can't be extracted... Of iron, Joan explains that "The atom nuclei for iron is quite stable..." which should be a dead giveaway to anyone that she has no idea what a nucleus is or what "stable" means (or the difference between "nucleus" and "nuclei"). Dumbass. Moving on to calcium:

"Calcium (Ca): Calcium... does not occur by itself as a metal, but as part of various minerals such as limestone, gypsum, and fluorite. Even stalagmites and stalactites contain some calcium in the form of calcium carbonate (CaCO3), a mineral alloy that is the basis for concrete. Calcium reacts to air (leaving a white coating) and with water (burning with a yellow-red flame to form the nitride)."

On our list for Whetzel's misinformation about calcium, we find

1. Limestone is not a mineral.
2. Calcite (CaCO₃) is not a "mineral alloy": it's a friggin' mineral!
3. Calcium does not burn in water, it reacts (slowly) to form calcium hydroxide. 
4. Calcium heated in air creates calcium nitride -- there's no nitrogen in water!

Joan then tells us that when "Sodium is...[c]ombined with chloride [sic] it forms common table salt."  That's funny, we thought the elements in NaCl are sodium and chlorine... Next, Whetzel takes on Potassium, of which she says, "It decays in water, and burns in reaction to water..." So which is it: decays or burns? Inquiring minds want to know! (Our chemist just moaned when he saw that bullshit.)

So there you have it: misinformation galore, and all in service of a self-appointed "freelance journalist's" desire to pick up a few pennies. We did have to laugh, however at the gushing comment left by another Hubber, Rodric29, who thought that all of that is "nice information." Guess we'll have to check out Rodric's hubs to see if he, too, deserves a Dumbass of the Day award or three!

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