> What about exothermic reactions using iron or aluminum filings?

Well now, we wouldn't want our precious little snowflakes to blow their fingers off. But we'll sign them up for cheerleading and football, where they can break their knees, heads and spines.

So we are basically banking on them all being professional athletes and dancers. But then, of course, we wonder how come we are so behind all the other countries in science and math.

I made nitrocellulose in high school chem in 2005; the teacher gave me the instruction sheet and told me to go at it. The teacher also made thermite and welded a cast iron pan to an iron plate. So, I don't know when or where you went to school, but we did the same things you did (thermite and nitroglycerin) only 5 years ago, and this in a little farm town of about 2,000 souls.

Little farm towns are the last bastion of sanity in this respect. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, too; the prevailing philosophy there is, if anybody else can do something, then I might as well try it.

Same here. I went to high school in a little farm town. There were no metal detectors or mandatory ID badges, people openly carried pocket knives in case they had to cut something, and some of the classes would leave you unsupervised with power tools. The only problems with security came from damn fool English teachers. One of them flipped out over a plastic butter knife, and another misinterpreted an teenage gloom as a warning sign of impending terrorism and called the police.

I, on the other hand, went to a public highschool in a well-to-do Los Angeles suburb. The year before I graduated, a senior girl was expelled from school two days before her graduation because she brought a swiss army knife on the senior trip.

delighted to hear it! I was just projecting a possible future - if a person gets into trouble with a few empty water bottles now .. what will they do to the curriculum later...