Did you know that France was actually the first company to use poison gas in World War 1? I didn’t either. Learn more amazing facts in the video below.
Welcome to Our study of Poison Gas of World War 1.
My son has been longing to tackle this topic but I deliberately held it off until the nicer weather. I’ve been imagining my son wanting to make smoke bombs and what not to test wind patterns. Nice weather makes that a whole lot easier to do eh? 🙂
BUT on to our study. We watched a number of videos. 🙂
Types of gas used
- tear gas – not truly dangerous, more of a nuisance
- chlorine gas – burning eyes, nose, mouth
- phosgene gas, sometimes mixed with chlorine gas killed 85% of all gases used.
- mustard gas – the most painful of all gases
Learning about Chlorine gas
Phosgene gas. 85% of all people who died from Chemical warfare died from this gas. Freshly mown gas smell. 80,000 people.
Mustard Gas. Though in this video the creator was wrong in stating that the Germans started the poison gas attacks. They did grab onto the idea rather firmly though. Mustard gas was named for its yellow-brown colour and mustard smell. It was a nasty gas which didn’t dissipate easily and would sink to lower levels and stuck around for years. Exposure to skin contact leads to blistering and burns. It could be very disfiguring.
Learning about the disfigurement of mustard gas led us to learn about Anna Coleman Watts/Ladd and her work making masks for these poor soldiers.
Videos My Son Picked:
This only the first half of this video is on poison gas.
The history of Fritz Haber. Haber was a Jewish German Chemist who thought that chemical warfare would end the war more quickly. Even though it didn’t. He never apologized for his work or actions. As a Jew he was later unwelcome in Hitler’s Germany. He died in Switzerland from a heart attack. He found himself unwelcome in many places due to his work in chemical warfare.
Small box Respirator. This video led us to learn more about the small box respirator through the Canadian War Museum. I think, Lieutenant Dockar, a Canadian, wrote this article. We learned a good bit reading that article. Close up’s of the SBR can be found here.
Reading
The lad did some reading from various books and downloaded product.
Other posts about world war one
- Belgium
- Animals in World War One
- Soldiers in Training
- Assassination
- Pre_war Alliances
- War Starts
- Trench Warfare.
- Trench Foot Experiment.
- Eastern Front.
- Battles of WW1.
- Sea Battles.
- Submarines.
- Airplanes.
Very interesting! We are just starting to study World War I ourselves so I’ll be pinning this post for all these wonderful references.
oh, I am glad. I love to be helpful. 🙂
Such a difficult subject, isn’t it? 🙁 But interesting. I did bookmark the video of how to make smoke bombs because I think my big boys would be all about that!
Such a sad time in history, but a great collection of videos.
I never would have thought of doing this as a unit study. Great idea!
it was a good study
The lad has found some really interesting things to study and these videos do a great job of teaching. Thanks for sharing about them.