The vice principal at a San Diego tech-themed magnet middle school must not have been very hip, rad, phat, or da bomb diggity in the 90s. The slang-challenged fellow recently confused a student’s science project that was da bomb for being…a bomb. An 11-year-old brought the home-made device, intended as a motion detector, to school to share with friends--and wound up with quite a commotion on his hands. In fact, it took a school-wide evacuation, x-rays, and a bomb sniffing robot for the school to determine that the child’s project was harmless. After searching the boy’s home for further threatening-looking paraphernalia, school officials let the boy go home. But don’t worry, they say, for they won’t be prosecuting him. We’d have liked to see that legal argument. Prosecuting for what? His interest in science? His self-directed initiative to work on a science project on his own time at home?
“California Middle School Evacuated After Science Project Mistaken for Bomb,” Associated Press, January 18, 2010
“Science project prompts SD school evacuation,” by Susan Shroder, San Diego Union-Tribune, January 15, 2010