The Briefing Room
General Category => Health/Education => Topic started by: mountaineer on January 13, 2021, 04:56:34 pm
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You can't make this stuff up.
School Evacuated After Student Brings Antique Dinner Plate
"No injuries were reported."
Lenore Skenazy
Jan. 12, 2021
The students were evacuated to the football field as Hazmat teams rushed to the scene. The local prosecutor was alerted, as were the police. Responders entered the building and went room by room. What calamity beset Haddon Township High School in New Jersey's Camden County last week? A bomb threat? A gas leak? Anthrax?
Worse. Dinnerware.
Specifically, Fiestaware, the colorful plates that took the U.S. by storm during the Great Depression. A sophomore had brought a quarter-size piece to his science class, because some of the plates were originally glazed with a red color that contained uranium oxide (at least until our war effort required uranium for the atom bomb, at which point the government confiscated them). The student had received a Geiger counter for Christmas and was going to do a little experiment in class. ...
The teen emerged to explain that the whole response, "Was a dramatic over-exaggeration… I gave them a quarter-size [piece of plate] that was enclosed in plastic so it couldn't be tampered with that gave off less radiation than most things you can find in an antique store. It was intended to be used as a source for calibrating Geiger counters."
Instead it became a source for calibrating school board over-reactivity. While the evacuated kids were allowed back into school after half an hour, the school board released a notice that a student had brought a "potentially dangerous substance" into the school. ...
Reason (https://reason.com/2021/01/12/antique-plate-fiestaware-school-evacuation/)
Fiestaware is made not far from our home. The annual tent sale draws thousands. No one has died from radiation poisoning. :laugh:
*****rollingeyes*****
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Have they blamed Trump yet?
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25 years ago I sold a Fiestaware platter from my great grandparent's set for $800 (buyer literally begged me for it) , so I can imagine what this plate costs now.
Bet he caught hell at home for the risk of breaking it.
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I couldn't tell from the story, but perhaps the old plate already was in pieces. In any event, the panic is good for a chuckle.
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I couldn't tell from the story, but perhaps the old plate already was in pieces. In any event, the panic is good for a chuckle.
I remember back in college, us getting jollies in Physics putting the Geiger Counter up against our watches with the Glow in the Dark Radium.
I am more concerned we have a HS Science teacher doesn't understand or know that there is natural occuring radioactivity.
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Good thing the Illudium PU-36 laced piece wasn't in the shape of a gun. All hell would have broken loose.
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In High School Physics, the teacher brought out a Geiger Counter with a small ingot of Uranium encasedin plastic. Some painted dinner plates from Mexico almost pegged the needle and clicked like a whole company of tap dancers. Barely registered the Uranium ingot.
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Antique dinner plates are a deadly weapon! Ban automatic antique dinner plates! Antique dinner plate control!
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omg, thank goodness it wasn't Fostoria! Oh, the humanity!
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Well, being a depression glass afficianado, I have read that that certain pieces of the original Fiesta and other patterns are not safe to eat from. The original pieces of Fiesta are highly prized I might add.
But just having them in the room isn't going to cause radiation poisoning. Surely this school is a joke. :facepalm2:
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All this talk of Fiestaware has me itching to make the drive up to Newell to visit the factory store. They've just announced their new color for 2021, Twilight. (https://fiestafactorydirect.com/pages/twilight)