A unique science project

I received this email today and thought some of you might want to be in on it - especially those far away from Tennessee. Here it is:

Sent: Sunday, February 09, 2003 9:37 PM
Subject: Eigth Garde Science Project

Hi, my name is Randy Rabon. I am an 8th grade student at University School in Johnson City, TN. I am working on a project for my 2003 Science Fair to be held February 24th, 2003. I am trying to see where, and how fast e-mail can travel in a period of ten days. I am keeping track of how much e-mail I get back, and from what cities, states, and countries they originate. I am hoping that you will be willing to help me with my project! There are only 2 simple steps that will help me to track this email:

1.. Please send an e-mail to the following address:
scienceproject2k3@yahoo.com

In the subject line of the e-mail please include just your city, state, and country. Please do not include your name, and do not write anything in the body of the e-mail (I won't have time to read them all). Please respond only one time.

2.. Then, please forward this e-mail to everyone on your mailing list. I will be keeping track of the number of responses, as well as the locations.

Therefore, send them even to people in your same town. In my science project, I am trying to demonstrate how fast and how far information can travel on the Internet in a ten-day period.

If you receive this e-mail after February 23,2003 please disregard it,since the project will be over.

Thank you VERY much for your help!
Randy Rabon

Okay, I sent one. Let's see if he can count 20k e-mails from Daves alone. Frank.

Sent one, too. Also sent to some on my email list.

I sent mine!
ßernie

Sent mine. I wish this kid luck with this project.

Done.

Sent mine as well

Sending also!

Sent mine too.

Me too...Jo

Sounds like an excellent method of spreading a worm or a virus.

Adam.

That was my first thought too John.Or a Marketer.

It's also used to build active email lists that can be sold. I did not participate. I have enough spam.

Good thinking, Root & BT!

Adam.

BA-Humbug!

Pardon me but..., did anyone do a search to see if there even IS a University School in Johnson City, TN?

Adam.

Yikes, I never thought of those things. Guess I'm just too trusting and naive. Anyway, I got the email from my d-in-law who is a computer whiz, so I felt okay about it.

I am very familiar with University School in Johnson City ... I did a graduate internship there for a year. It exists.

Well, the University School has a medical school, etc..., but the young lady says she is in eighth grade. I imagine she's a few years away from studying epidemiology or oncology. ;~)

Adam.

I just sent one to the address using a junk account I rarely check. It just gets spam, anyway.

Looks like the school is a K-12 laboratory school run by the university: http://www.etsu.edu/educator/us/

I ran an E mail search,nothing,did come up with a Dr Rabon,in johnson city.:)

I just e-mailed the science teacher there. I'll post any reply I receive.

I hope you all checked out Kimberley's link - and clicked on the picture to learn about the school.

University School has grades K-12. It is on the campus of East Tennessee State University in Johnson City (about 20 miles from where I live). College students majoring in education/teaching often do their practice teaching at that school. I did my 'practice guidance counseling' there for a year. I have no doubt that this person is an 8th grader with a genuine science project.

Not everybody is up to no good. I would guess that about 85% of the population (and yes, even those who use the internet) are trustworthy people.



This message was edited Sunday, Feb 16th 12:56 PM

I'm sending an email. I also see it as a great science project and I am going to take my chances and help this student out. On the other hand, I have asked everyone I have forwarded this to not to use it in a chain. Somebody somewhere down the chain could easily use it for their own financial gain and this student would be blamed because it originated from him/her.

That brings up a good point, CoCo. When you send something on to other people, put your e-mail address in the TO field and the recipients' e-mail addresses in the BCC (blind carbon copy) field. That way, your recipients do not get the whole list of people it was sent to.

When you receive a forwarded message and want to forward it on, take the time to do a little cut and paste so your recipient doens't just get all the headers and e-mail addresses of the previous recipients with the real e-mail stuck waaaay down in the bottom.

Many people just delete e-mails which come like that.

To do that,

1. Use your mouse to highlight just the portion of the e-mail that's relevant

2. With the text/pictures highlighted, press the CTRL key on your keyboard and then tap the C key. This copies the text into the Windows clipboard

3. Open a new e-mail message and enter the TO, SUBJECT, BCC, etc.

4. Put your cursor in the body of the e-mail, where you'd start typing.

5. Press the CTRL key and tap the V key to paste the text into your new e-mail.

My reason for mentioning any possible issues having to do with the proposed science project is connected to real world experience and the time, effort and costs of recovering from worm and / or virus infection (to say nothing of adding one's email address to mailing lists).

Of course it is always preferable to be trusting and give the other fellow or woman the benefit of the doubt. But, remember friends, this is the Internet, where it is easy to mask one's identity and intentions, and a few seconds of prevention and due diligence on one's own part can save hours of frustration, pain and significant costs later on.

The world is an imperfect place, and cynical me just tries to play by rules dictated by the world in which he lives.

Adam.

I hate to see a child's school science fair project and this thread stopped to a dead halt, so I called the school directly. There IS a Science Fair at this school with an 8th grade student pursuing this project. Anyone who wants to contact the teacher directly, to see if this is on the up and up, please email me.

Aotearoa, I can sympathize with your concerns/opinions to a certain extent. I was formerly married to someone from Brooklyn and he was a cynical type too. I do question the fact that when you kept posting your doubts, why didn't you try going the route that I did to try to find out the answer for all the members here? This generation is our future.

Thanks, Carol - I e-mailed the science teacher a few days ago since it was the weekend, but with the weather and holiday, hadn't heard back anything yet. It'd be good if the school would put a note on their middle school page about the projects, wouldn't it?

I am automatically suspicious of anything that asks one to "forward this email to everyone on your mailing list." I did decide this was a legitimate request after some research, but wonder if there could be some opportunity down the line somewhere for someone else to make unscrupulous use of the addresses collected. It is a shame to have to be so careful that we cannot help someone with a project, but that seems to be the reality of it. Just my thoughts... John

Carol ~~~

If you review my posts, I asked questions, such as is there such a school, etc. I did not directly or indirectly criticize either the child or her school. I stated my reasons for not participating, which remain valid.

I think my statements and questions are unambiguous and stand on their own without requiring additional justification. Thus, I offer none.

This is an open forum, in which, within the rules stated by Dave, our host, we express opinions regarding gardening and other matters of interest.

I don't know your former husband. Any speculation on the similarity between us borders on unfounded, or perhaps silly.

Because I am an adult, I choose not to take offense at being compared to a person from a place as uncouth as Brooklyn. My sense of humor remains intact.

Respectfully,

Adam.

This message was edited Tuesday, Feb 18th 5:35 PM

I don't respond to these things either - below is an email I got today refering to this same topic.


From: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7853
>
> 15 year old girl gets email blizzard
>
> Chain letter madness
>
> By INQUIRER staff: Tuesday 18 February 2003, 09:57
>
> A SCIENCE FAIR PROJECT started by a 15 year old girl went a little
> awry. Shannon Syfrett wanted to find out how far an email she sent
> would go and ended up with far more than she had bargained for.
>
> According to Dow Jones, Shannon created an email account with AOL and
> sent an email to 23 people. The email asked people to send a response
> and pass the email on. She had expected to receive a few hundred
> emails back, maybe a few thousand if she was lucky. She ended up with
> 160,478 responses.
>
> The emails came from 189 countries, from ships at sea, from polar
> research stations, oil rigs, Navy vessels and just about everywhere
> else on the surface of the planet. By the end of her science fair
> project, new emails were arriving every 2.3 seconds.
>
> Shannon shut down the project 17 days early thinking that might be the
> end of it. Far from it. Despite the fact that the email gave no clues
> as to her location, some people managed to track her down and phoned
> to complain that they couldn't get their emails through to her.
>
> Between them, Shannon and her mother claim to have read every email
> that came in. A staggering task in itself. µ
>
>
>

Adam, I hope you are not offended by my using your first name in this post instead of your dg name. First of all, if you hadn't used the word cynical to describe yourself I would never had made the comparison between you two. I only know you by the words you used to describe yourself. As for any other comparisons - I absolutely agree - you are/were two completely different people and silly may be a usable adjective. As for the uncouth people from Brooklyn I am going to accept that you said that only in jest to lighten the situation. There are so many great people from Brooklyn such as Shirley Chisholm, Vince Lombardi, and George Gershwin to name a few.

I am going to have faith that this science project works out in a positive way.

Azalea: wow! That's pretty crazy.

Adam and Carol and everyone else: Thanks for all your replies. It's always good to hear a variety of opinions.

I have a feeling that this 8th grade child has been bombarded with so many emails that his/her science project will be a huge success (and they'll be quite sick of it.)

Right now, DH's computer is down because of a virus he picked up somewhere. He downloads too many things from the internet (IMHO) and picked it up that way, I fear. Even though we both have Norton, it apparently doesn't always work. Norton has always protected us, though, from bad emails, and I'm glad of that.

I got a reply from the science teacher:

Kimberley,

Thank you for taking the time and interest to verify Randy's project. It is an actual science fair project, however, due to overwhelming response he is closing his email account in an attempt to end the replies. I hope that you have not been too inconvenienced by his email.

Thanks for your time,

Laura Robertson
Middle School Math & Science Teacher
University School
Johnson City, TN

8 years ago I worked for a computer company and my boss came in one day and asked me to send some business cards to a young lad who was collecting them in order to get into the Guinness Book of Records. The boy was, according to the letter, 7 years of age and had cancer.

I never did send the business cards nor pass on the letter to our client companies because I couldn't verify the address. 2 or 3 years ago I read a news article about the same lad, he was, by then, in his mid teens and totally recovered from his illness. The article was about the level of mail he had generated from his first initial letters to local companies 7 years previously. The family had moved in that time and his old address was still receiving 3 sackfulls of mail a week but no one could stop the letters still going around the world!

Personally, I think Aotearoa brought up some interesting points about these kind of emails. Many of us do want to help when these things get into our mail box but how many of us check they are genuine? Fortunately (for us but not necessarily for the schoolkid considering he has had to close the email account *G*) this case was genuine but it makes you wonder how many aren't!

Yes - I am very skeptical about these things - I got 2 this week!! I fear that many of these solicitations are simply people collecting email addresses for thir own gain, possibly to sell a list or just to spam with junk mail! So I never respond to them or add my name to petitions which are usually a hoax.

Baa, I remember my company receiving that letter about 8 yrs ago, maybe longer. And we all sent our business cards and forwarded the letter on to other companies. Then a couple of months ago, I received the same letter (I had changed companies in the meantime) and I tossed it, even though my boss wanted me to do it. funny how these things get started and then years later, they are still circulating.

My first thought when I saw this, as well as when I received one from teacher writing to me about a local student she mentored last year doing the same thing, was that it sounded like a pretty simple and unimaginative thing to do for science project - not too hard, you know?

seemed more like social studies or something to me...