Monday, July 9, 2007

Get into med school without taking chemistry



The fortunately fumbled bombings in London and Glasgow are frightening evidence that medical training has hit rock bottom in the United Kingdom.

Otherwise, how could the cabal of incompetent doctors have tried to make bombs without any explosives? Thank goodness they didn't, of course.

But what did they think would happen to a car packed with containers of gasoline and propane? Liquid gasoline will burn. Vaporize it, ignite with a spark, and the result is a massive thermobaric blast.

Doing that yourself is not simple, by any means. Don't try it, either, unless you want to end up in a burn unit without any skin.

A Department of Defense lab worked on the problem for several months before they produced a thermobaric weapon with which to incinerate caves.

Same deal with propane. Of course, if you place a propane tank in a fire, once it reaches a certain temperature it will explode, and probably streak off in an unpredictable direction like a canon ball.

This is all very basic chemistry. An explosive, high or low, requires unstable bonds that break exothermically. It also requires it's own source of oxygen and large number of molecules of gas that are released and expand rapidly.

Any med student at Yale could easilly make a workable bomb.

That runs counter to Hippocratic oath. But so does filling vehicles with flammable liquids and trying to set them off in a crowded urban area.

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