Elementary Chemistry for Dummies

Baking soda mixed with lemon juice

Much of the most conspicuous dumbassery discovered by the Antisocial Network's researchers as they troll the internet lies at the feet of the website we call the mother lode of all dumbassery, eHow.com. After the site took a serious¹ hit in Google's Panda update, the owners (Demand Media) split up the website and created "titles," as they call them, in numerous subgenres across multiple websites (Livestrong, SFGate, Synonym, etc.). The contributors, however, stayed pretty much the same; as did (apparently) their vaunted content editors – not to mention the morons, whoever or whatever they are, who created the titles. That's how a documented scientific illiterate like Jonae Fredericks ended up writing about chemistry – yes, chemistry! – for a Demand Media niche site called ModernMom.com (now at OurEverydayLife.com after brief tenure at TheBump.com). The results? A bit of classic dumbassery the people at DMS titled "What Happens When You Mix Lemon Juice With Baking Soda?"

The real answer is pretty simple, though it has little or nothing to do with motherhood. If you mix lemon juice (or vinegar or any other acid, preferably weak) with baking soda, the acid reacts with the sodium bicarbonate to form sodium citrate and water. Carbon dioxide gas is also liberated, which causes what scientists call "effervescence" and Jonae calls a "bubbly reaction."

That Frederick is clearly out of her depth in this article is pretty obvious to anyone who remembers his or her middle-school science classes, or has completed a college chemistry course or two (apparently you don't need that sort of education to get a license as a cosmetologist), Some of the more obvious hints are, first, that Jonae never actually says what happens when you combine the two substances, though we will give her credit for finding out during her "research" that lemon juice contains citric acid. But she quickly loses any good will from our chemist types by saying bullshit like "Made from soda ash, baking soda is a naturally occurring soda bicarbonate with an alkaline base."

It has "an alkaline base"? That's what happens when someone who doesn't know what the term "base" means, in the chemical sense, tries to reword something she doesn't understand. Oh, and there's more:

"When you mix an acid and a base, the result is a chemical reaction that creates a new product, with a neutral base."

There's that failure to understand "base" again. Another science-y word Jonae doesn't get is "salt":

"...[if you mix] lemon juice and baking soda, the new product is carbon dioxide gas, water and salt..."

Well, no, there's no NaCl (common table salt) created in the reaction, mainly because there's no chlorine in any of the inputs. The reaction does create a salt, sodium citrate, but Jonae clearly doesn't understand this.

We were somewhat torn with this Dumbass of the Day award, mainly because we couldn't figure out who deserves it most. Should it go to the dumbass title specialist who placed this question at ModernMom.com instead of at a science niche site (does DMS even have one?³), or should it go to the dumbass editor who allowed it to be published? Or should it go to the dumbass freelancer who, though she knew she didn't have the background to write about chemistry, posted anyway? We gave it to the freelancer: her fourth award.

¹ not to mention well-deserved
² Oh, and the "staff" at ModernMom rewrote it before Leaf moved it to TheBump, but if you'd like to see the original you can just look it up on archive.org's Wayback machine with the URL

   motherhood.modernmom.com/happens-mix-lemon-juice-baking-soda-7871.html
³ yes: they call it "sciencing.com" – makes ya wanna ralph...

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