David Hahn, a 16-year-old Scientist

     The periodic table is a mysterious thing, as one boy named David Hahn found out. When he was only 16 years old, he wanted to solve the world's energy crisis and break its addiction to oil. He quickly got involved with many dangerous chemicals. His mother sent him from his room, to his basement, to the backyard shed to do his work. The backyard shed was probably a good idea since he wasn't very careful with his work. He ended up with an orange face when a fake tanning chemical blew up in his face, and one time he accidentally exploded a container of purified potassium. One of his more complicated projects was working on a reactor. He decided to build a "breeder reactor," which makes its own fuel through a clever combination of radioactive species. Even with all his work, it was later found that he wasn't nearly close to accomplishing this task.
     One day he was poking around parked cars and the police found him. They found vials of strange powder in his car and they brought him in for questioning. The case dragged on for months as nobody would claim David. In the mean times, his mother cleared out the shed, but months later a lot of radioactivity could still be found when the officials stormed the shed. Since his had no malevolent intentions and 9/11 hadn't happened yet, he was mostly let off the hook. He enlisted in the Navy right after high school. Afterwards, he bummed around in his hometown and police ended up catching him tampering with smoke detectors that had americium in them, which was used to make his neutron gun. In 2007 his mug shot was released to the media and he had tons of red sores all over, most likely from more nuclear experiments.
     It seems like some people just never learn from their mistakes. And this little story just goes to show you how passionate some scientists are about their work!