@Natasha_Jay Plus neither of them were 13....

@benroyce @mike805 @mcnees It's been tried in parabolic flights. @drskyskull has written a whole book on faĺling felines. https://youtu.be/O9XtK6R1QAk

@AndorianSoup @mcnees I grew up, from a baby, with a lab/German shepherd cross (we think), it's possible that dog taught me more about interacting with humans than my parents did.

@AndorianSoup @mcnees Earthrise, pale blue dot, happy dogs, first footprint, it's tricky to know which is the most fundamental human image.

Except it's the dogs. I have a theory that wolves domesticated us just as much as we domesticated them, hence we behave more like pack animals than apes somtimes.

@StriderLongshanks Aww, shucks

@StriderLongshanks this is 16+, usually 17 or 18 year old students in this context, working in their own lab. Very different rules for <16s.

@StriderLongshanks We only let them play with the "fun stuff" if we're confident they have the understanding to do it safely, and the confidence to come to me or one of the teachers if they mess up. I applaud anyone coming to me with a spillage etc as being exactly the right thing to do.

@StriderLongshanks Health and safety is a big one, as in they need to properly risk assess everything before I even give them reagents. They're almost always way too careful, which is good. Two interesting incidents in 6 years, both students saying "erm...can you double check this?", and both were right to do so. One with a sealed system that may have gone bang (safely, in a fume cupboard), the other nearly rediscovered nitrocellulose by the original accident.

@StriderLongshanks Not part of the curriculum, but one of the suggested Advanced Higher(~17/18yo) projects. Second time in 6 years I've seen it done, both times good students who got good results and asked me interesting questions. (I'm very much a uni technician at this point, we can discuss the practicalities of an expriment, but I can't guide them into how they do the project, makes for careful conversation at times!)

That's just under a quarter of a standard tablet, which are normally bulked out with lactose and chalk, student considered that in the TLC/chromatography tests. And as I'm not *giving* them a drug, merely packaging one they made themself, and they wrote a detailed risk assessment for the experiment including the end product, fair enough I think

One of my chemistry students made drugs. Aspirin, in this case. They confirmed they'd nailed it with a very accurate melting point measurement and then some thin layer chromatography. Yield was a little low, but hey, first go using high school kit. I made them a little souvenir, 0.06g of it in a tiny handmade phial.