Chemistry Sets for Adults?

An Anonymous Coward asks "I've been pursuing a few different lines of study, to refresh myself in basic sciences before I return to school. Right now I am reading up on Chemistry, and thought it would be fun to acquire a chemistry set just to play around with and maybe learn a few things from. Do any science geeks here have any suggestions?" My childhood garage probably still has purple and black stains all over it (lucky I was wearing glasses). 300 in one electronics kits, anyone?

Comments

Why do we need these?

[packeteer]

So called "childrens" chemistry and electronics sets are perfectly good for adult too.

Essential oil extraction

[MrLint]

When i was in Orgo chem the *best* and coolest thing we did was extract limoene (orange oil). But you need reflux glassware for it.. but i'll tell ya the stuff smells great. and the practical upshot is that you can use it and other essental oils as food flavorings

Re:Why?

[Gorobei]

Exactly - that was the experience I had with my old 300-in-1 chemistry set about 27 years ago.

I did 30 pages of book/guided stuff. E.g. filtering a sand and salt solution, then spending 2 hours getting the salt out of the solution... at the end, guess what? I had salt again!!! Gee, that was fun.

I switched to my own guided experiments soon after that: KnO3 is cool, magnesium burns pretty well, sulfur smells bad, but hydrogen sulphide is even better! My father (a chemist) banished my experiments to the garage.

Next month, I told my parents I needed a pound of sodium chlorate as a desiccant. My father managed to keep a straight face, but bought it for me anyway.

Many more self-directed experiments were performed, and I found myself learning in leaps and bounds: I learned about the surface area of reactants when I thoughtlessly substituted powdered charcoal for granulated sugar in a simple propulsion experiment. Haha, skin and hair grow back.

Chemistry is cool, but make sure your set has fun compounds... I mean, what the hell fun is copper sulphate, etc?

Also, keep a lab book: it makes for pretty fun reading later in life ("4oz nitrocellulose," what was I thinking?) and is helpful if you screw up and the doctor/bomb-disposal unit needs to figure out what was going on.

environment, geology

[g4dget]

Measuring and monitoring the presence and amounts of chemicals in the environment and in food might be a good area to get involved in. You can get by with limited resources, the experiments tend not to be dangerous, it teaches excellent laboratory technique, and you can accomplish something useful. You could pick a problem that interests you personally (oxygen levels, organic matter, pollutants in a local lake), or you might look around for a volunteer organization to get involved in--they might even be able to provide laboratory facilities and train you.

Other areas that involve chemistry and makes a good hobby are geology and mineralogy. You can collect samples, characterize them, learn about crystallography, and also analyze the samples chemically.

And if you get seriously involved, you can actually accomplish new science in areas like those, even with fairly modest resources. There are lots of publications dedicated to both the hobbyist and the professionals in those areas; look at them at your local university library to get some ideas.

sciplus

[beej]

Cheap beakers and things, as well as a variety of cheap cool geekstuffs: http://www.sciplus.com/

Warning: prepare to spend at least an hour looking at this site.

Photo Darkroom: the adult chemistry set

[sakusha]

Get into developing and printing your own photos. You know, the old analog kind. Even better, study some old antique photo processes like Cyanotype or Platinography. I make my own photo papers using these antique methods, and it is satisfying enough to keep me interested, and I was an Honors Chem major until I switched to art, majoring in photography).
Making your own printing papers and photochems is a ton of fun, and yields tangible results (unlike most things you could do with a chemistry set).

Interesting experiments: Silvering a mirror

[jms]

One of the most interesting and rewarding reactions you can study as an amateur is mirror silvering using Tollens' reagent. I had an arc lamp reflector that needed resilvering, and decided to do it myself.

After a lot of web research, I found that this website had the best directions (and the best safety warnings!):

http://lerch.no-ip.com/atm/Silver.htm

The only chemicals I had any trouble finding were silver nitrate crystals, which can be purchased from photography supply stores, such as:

http://www.photoformulary.com/

or ebay, and concentrated nitric acid, which can be purchased from lithography supply stores, such as:

http://www.rembrandtgraphicarts.com/13_rga_cat.h tm l

The hazmat shipping charge for the nitric acid will exceed the cost of the chemical.

The process is somewhat complex, involves a number of stages, but isn't too difficult to do. It's an interesting reaction to watch, and the result is cool and useful. I created a perfect mirror coating on the inside of a bottle on the second try, and successfully coated my reflector mirror immediately thereafter.

Everything worked for me, except that I found that I had to heat the muriatic acid in order to make the solder dissolve when creating the sensitizing solution.

That's my recommended interesting experiment.

May I suggest a book instead?

[MickLinux]

You of course will need chemicals and chemistry equipment. I expect that you could call the local high school and find out where to get them -- and the high school teacher could suggest where you might get a nice sampling. I can't help a lot there.

But perhaps I could suggest a book, instead:

Laboratory Experiments for General Chemistry, 4ed
by Hunt, Block, and McKelvy
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/deta il/-/0030 32906X/qid=1041495102/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-128032 3-3723057?v=glance&s=books

This one is extremely useful in that it:

(1) Lists the equipment needed for each (so you can go through, find the experiments that you can do)
(2) Lists tons of safety and first-aid information, with standardized icons for each item
(3) provides lab reports to fill out, which will help you understand the experiments
(4) The experiments are actually rather standard; not all of them require special equipment.

One word of caution: After produced the book, my brother noted that one of the experiments, standard to most College Chemistry Lab courses, is wrong:

Experiment 13, the Burning of a Candle.

My brother claims that the experiment purports to demonstrate the stoichiometry of combustion; in reality, it demonstrates the heat given off by candles, and the ideal gas law PV=NRT. He said that he demonstrated this by attempting the experiment in several different ways, one with 3 candles close together (burning hotter), one with three candles farther apart (burning cooler).

I haven't done that experiment myself in his way. But I thought I should mention that.