10-Year-Old Accidentally Creates New Molecule in Science Class
Tetranitratoxycarbon Professor Robert Zoellner holds a model of tetranitratoxycarbon. He has a co-authorship on a paper about the new molecule--along with ten-year-old Clara Lazen. Humboldt State UniversityLittle Clara's tetranitratoxycarbon is brand new and explosive Clara Lazen is the discoverer of tetranitratoxycarbon, a molecule constructed of, obviously, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon. It's got some interesting possible properties, ranging from use as an explosive to energy storage. Lazen is listed as the co-author of a recent paper on the molecule. But that's not what's so interesting and inspiring about this story. What's so unusual here is that Clara Lazen is a ten-year-old fifth-grader in Kansas City, MO. Kenneth Boehr, Clara's science teacher, handed out the usual ball-and-stick models used to visualize simple molecules to his fifth-grade class. But Clara put the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms together in a particular complex way and asked Boehr if she'd made a real molecule. Boehr, to...