Sodium nitrate is deadly, mothers, lock up your daughters!

[Pleiades]

Did anyone see Cold Case “Superstar” on Mar/26/2006 on CBS? Anyone feel like joining me for a laugh about how they seem to think you can kill someone by ‘lacing’ their towel with sodium nitrate? Don’t these people have a science advisor?

 

(in case you didn’t see it, it was about a case where a tennis player gets killed by a towel laced with ‘poison’, sodium nitrate.) Oh! But the killer was a chemistry major, she must have known sodium nitrate was ‘deadly’!

 

Sorry this probably isn’t worthy of a post, but I just had to vent about this ignorance.

[jdurg]

Yeah, I've gotten kind of used to that. I mean, in the James Bond movie 'The World Is Not Enough', they walk around holding onto lumps of plutonium metal the size of your head (which would make it supercritical), and the final battle takes place inside a running nuclear reactor. My brain still cringes at that garbage.

[Pleiades]

Haha, I remember a scene in ‘Alias’ where she is diffusing a plutonium bomb. After breaking away the shell of detonator explosives, she somehow lets the ball of plutonium roll away from her and makes some heroic leap to stop the ball from falling off the edge, like its gonna explode or something if she lets it drop.

[RyanJ]

If you want crap look at a show called Brainiac. Never seen so much science rubbish in one place

 

• Petrol DOES NOT explode.
  
• Dynamite is not detonated by heat (e.g. not by a burning wick).
  
• Sodium Carbonate is [ce]Na2CO3[/ce] NOT [ce]NaNO3[/ce]!
  

 

... and the list goes on an on!

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[YT2095]

there was another similar (forgot the program name) but a "muderer" was lacing the fabric of clothes with PETN, making the victims explode! ROFLOL

 

Nice try!

[woelen]

Oh yes, there is a lot of ignorance and chemophobia. Recently, somewhere in the Netherlands, a parcel service lost a small parcel, containing some calcium nitrate. The loss of this parcel was mentioned. Police warned people, that if they see the parcel, they should NOT touch it, they should leave it alone and they should warn officials. A few hours later, the parcel was found and some persons in "overpressured white space suits" took away the parcel. People were watching this with fear and terror.... this is unbelievable, but it really happened .

 

If you want crap look at a show called Brainiac. Never seen so much science rubbish in one place

[...]

That kind of programs only does one thing. It grows k3wls .

[RyanJ]

That kind of programs only does one thing. It grows k3wls .

 

Well... atleast they don't tell you plain out how to make the stuff, most of the time they don't even use its real names but it is idiotic because it basially says that playing with fire is fun. The "don't try this at home" warning has the opposite effect...

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[Pleiades]

They ought to bring Mr. Wizard's World back, I loved that show.

[theMaharajah]

ROTFLMAO, TITF!!!!! MSHFLSM!!!

 

The people on this show are so dumb they wouldn't know how to tell a cation from an anion if it hit them in the gluteous maximus.

[budullewraagh]

i think that if you were hit in the gluteus maximum with an ion you wouldnt be able to determine its pole

[theMaharajah]

i think that if you were hit in the gluteus maximum with an ion you wouldnt be able to determine its pole

I know! that's the funny part!

[bascule]

Yeah, I've gotten kind of used to that. I mean, in the James Bond movie 'The World Is Not Enough', they walk around holding onto lumps of plutonium metal the size of your head (which would make it supercritical), and the final battle takes place inside a running nuclear reactor. My brain still cringes at that garbage.

 

Oh man, I remember that part.

 

"Touch it! It won't hurt you!"

 

The pseudoscience in Bond movies used to be funny in a campy way. Now it's just stupid.