This deserves its own frickin post.

So I found this little gem on AIM.com. That should have been a tipoff right there, but I was intrigued. This led me to find the most blatant example of scientific idiocy in print that I can remember having seen. Let me break down the main selling points:

1) "Men Allegedly Bomb McDonald's Over Shake" (the title) So how sensationalist is that? Still, it gets better...

2) "Investigators say the men mixed toilet bowl cleaner and aluminum foil in a plastic soda bottle as they sat at a table Friday evening near the restaurant's restrooms. They then capped the bottle, put it on the table and left before it exploded at 10:45 p.m. Friday. A customer sitting 10 feet away wasn't hit by the splashing chemicals." (straight from the article)

My roomie Dan, resident chemist, explained that the reaction was probably due to sulfuric acid in the cleaner reacting with the metal, releasing relatively harmless gas. Something akin to mixing vinegar and baking soda. Therefore, the "explosion" to which the article repeatedly refers was nothing more than a pop, probably the top coming off the bottle. And the "splashing chemicals" - again, toilet bowl cleaner - would have gone approximately nowhere.

3) "'The toilet bowl cleaner has an acid base,' Taylor said. 'It can burn your skin and put your eyes out.'" (sadly... verbatim from the article)

Best... and by far the worst. I could just go on about this one. When I read it I literally did a double take. To a chemist, the way it was said that the active ingredient of the cleaner is acidic in nature is rather unwieldy. However, the rest is so alarmist that even our overcareful lab director would giggle at how the dangers of toilet bowl cleaner were described. The sheriff doing the talking here sounds like some kind of uninformed parent explaining to a three year old why he shouldn't play under the sink. "You'll put your eye out!!!" Ha. Oh, and I think they weren't kidding.

So in conclusion, AIM news has yet to find the top end of the reliable list, and I have yet to figure that out before reading their silly stories. There was one about nuking hurricanes, but I haven't gotten to it yet... maybe I should quit while I'm ahead.