Science Fair Experiments for Dummies

Note the time on bottom scale...

If it were not so infuriating because of the level of dumbassery involved, reading through the work of some of the more "inventive" freelancers would be downright hilarious. That's exactly why we chose a Sciencing.com post written by freelancer Shellie Braeuner, "How to Dissolve Silicate," for today's DotD nominee. Take it from our geologist, this one's a doozy!

We figure that the OQ was either a middle-schooler studying earth science or a college student on an athletic scholarship struggling through "Rocks for Jocks," probably someone studying for a test that included chemical weathering. Either way, Brauener's approach – designing an "experiment" – probably didn't provide the intended answer...

Shellie, in spite of her MEd, blew this one. Oh, she started off more or less OK with a correct-ish, though clumsy, introduction to silicates. We aren't really sure that this line,

"Silicon combines with other elements, such as calcium, iron, potassium and magnesium to form a wide range of silicate material..."

...captures the significance of "silicate," since (by definition) a silicate includes oxygen. But what the heck: it's her experiment that got the staff howling with laughter. Here's what she wants us to do:

1. Crush 10 grams of aspirin
2. Dissolve the powdered aspirin in 500 ml of deionized water
3. Add 1 tsp quartz sand
4. Watch the sand dissolve [according to Brauener, it should happen overnight].

We have no earthly idea where Shellie came up with this doofus experimental design, but we can assure you that a teaspoon of quartz sand will not dissolve overnight in dilute salicylic acid (maybe in hydrofluoric acid...). The experiments that Brauener cites as references all dealt with micromoles of silicate minerals – minerals with metallic cations such as microcline and amphiboles – and the experimental design called for thousands of hours of observation. Shellie confused quartz with higher-temperature (and therefore less chemically stable) minerals, confused thousands of hours with "overnight," and made up the whole aspirin thing out of whole cloth. See now why Brauener is our Dumbass of the Day?

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