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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?
I hear those rolling methamphetamine labs are getting pretty popular.
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
Carolina Biological Supply has a bunch of learning kits, books, and software that would probably help you out. We get most of our lab supplies through them.
I think it's about time we added a "hydroponics" category. Honestly, most nerds will probably applaud it.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Edmund Scientific
http://www.scientificsonline.com
My dad used to take me there when I was a kid, a very trippy place. It got me through all of my science classes with pre-made projects.
ACK!!! Great stars! Are you *MAD*?! NEVER take anything from the Anarchist's Cookbook. Might as well drink a jug of chlorine, it'll do the exact same thing and save you a lot of time.
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
I'd be real careful about buying 'chemistry' kits these days. If the war on drugs does not send the suits to your door, I'm sure the war on terror will.
Brewing - wine and beer are a good start. A fair amount of chemistry (and biology) involved when you think about it. Taking the alcohol content above 15% or so lets you play with even more toys.
Best college experience was making moonshine from captain crunch in the dorms. A bit of enzymes to convert the starch to sugar, let bubble, then we pulled out the still. Nothing like a mass spectrometer to assure you don't go blind....
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I would recommend a molecular model kit though if you really want something to play with, or if you want to be more geeky, you can get some molecular modeling software.
I agree. Building your own chemistry set would be more fun, and you would learn more.
The best way to learn is to teach. Collecting a bunch of good chemistry experiments, and the sources for the materials, would make a great project.
And you aren't the only one who benefits...
Some places to start:
Delights of Chemistry
Demonstration Lab
Lecture Demonstrations
Chemistry Resources
Some Sources of chemicals:
CHEM Scientific
Fisher
Sagent Welch
Carolina
I am certain you will get lots more from other Slashdaughters...
Free book: Science Toys You Can Make
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.
To clarify, there are multiple versions of the Anarchist Cookbook, and if that's a copy of the original, just strap some TNT to yourself and light it, it really will save you time in the long run. The original is replete with errors, many chemical, that could cause lots of damage.
However, I doubt that's the original, since the original is extremely rare (if you don't see something about the bridges in NYC, you're not looking at the original). Still, it's not a wise move to perform chemical experiments using instructions from a book that's designed to cause destruction, chaos, and anarchy.
If you're really just looking to win a Darwin award, however...
You zap the moderators with a wand of humor! The moderators resist!
If you are serious about doing synthetic work, I
would see about taking several lab courses at a
local college. They are already set up with
sources for the reagents, safty equipment (ie,
hoods, glove boxes, safe storage for the reagents,
safe disposal of the reagents, plus more
analytical instrumentation so that you will be
able to confirm that what you made is what you
intended to make.
If you really insist on seting up a lab at home,
make sure that you set up a safe lab. Please do
the following:
1) Ensure that you can safely store, handle and dispose of any reagents.
2)Be sure to join an amateur scientist oganization, and find some help, if only to double check that you are doing #1 correctly.
3) consider the legal difficulties
-in the state of texas it is a felony to own
certain common glassware without a permit.
Just to be safe, check your local laws along
with the fire codes.
4) If you can legally own glassware, consider
buying the microscale equipment. It should
be the same price or less for it, however
you'll use smaller volumn of reagent.
By all means, check out the Student Science Service (http://www.tri-esssciences.com) in Burbank, California. They sell a few high-end chemistry sets of their own design (these are not kiddie sets). Ira Katz and his daughter, Kim, are the owners and are easilly accessable via e-mail. They're also one of the largest suppliers of pyrotechnic special effects to the local movie studios. Can't recommend 'em enough. -Kevin
Keeping proper care of a --bound-- lab logbook is something I'll carry with me always, regardless of my career path. I still hand-number RH pages in ink; TOC in front; notes on left page; --dated-- documentation on the right. My only backslide is the occasional use of pencil. (I no longer wrangle instruments, now sysadmin.)
Good logbook habits avoid the WTF syndrome.
"Remember, any tool can be the right tool." -- Red Green
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).
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.
h tm l
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.
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.
I totally agree with this. Most "modern" chemistry sets are so sickeningly-safe that they do not truly allow any chemistry to be done. I would collect your own chemicals, maybe buying a chemistry set to give you some guidance.
There are several cautions that I would keep in mind. First of all, chemistry is highly dangerous. Many of the "first" discoverers of a chemical compound of process have actually turned out to be the second, third, etc. The true first discoverers literally killed themselves in the attempt and were thus not able to make their claim to fame! The first inventor of gunpowder, the first discoverer of fluorine, chemistry is riddled with those that tried something without understanding the consequences of their actions.
Get several good chemistry texts and read them all the way through. Start off with simple, harmless experiments. Do not try anything potentially explosive, corrosive, or vapor-producing. Keep several neutralizing agents on hand, such as baking soda, lime, sand, a good multi-purpose fire extinguisher. Perform your experiments in an extremely well-ventilated area that has been fireproofed and is far away from any living or eating areas. A separate shack is a good place. Use goggles, a heavy rubberized and/or canvas smock, solid leather shoes, disposable gloves and face masks for some experiments.
Never leave an experiment unattended. Never dump the results of your experiments in the same place, they can sometimes cross-react and form a dangerous mixture. Do not store anything which has the potential to become unstable, many nitrogen and phosphorous compounds can spontaneously react and cause extreme heat, vapors, or explosions.
Make sure of the purity of your ingredients. If you get ordinary bleach for the sodium hypoclorite be careful - perfumes, surfactants, and other agents are often added to them which can cause unwanted reactions to occur. The same goes for household ammonia cleaning solutions. Most metals you will get will be alloys, always understand the elements in the alloy and how they may react in an experiment.
Yeah, it's a lot to keep in mind, but chemistry is truly a dangerous business. I've been working in chemical labs for over 10 years and I've seen professional chemists with doctorates have accidents that you wouldn't believe. Explosions, runaway reactions, improperly ventilated experiments, splashes of highly corrosive compounds, forgetting to turn on or off some crucial bit of equipment, a lot of people get hurt even in the safest laboratory. I'm very careful simply because every exposure to some of these chemicals shortens my life-span. Many of the chemicals will take up permanent residence in your bones, will leave holes in your liver, will cause you to go blind, or even will make you go sterile. Lots of them have a cumulative effect so every exposure increases the risk, no matter how much time has passed.
So be careful!
Sapere aude!