xii DIY Science: Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments
I used the balance to weigh something for the first time. I put an
object in one of the balance pans and carefully added weights
to the other pan until the needle was centered. As I was about to
jump on to something else, my dad brought me to a screeching
halt. “Write it down,” he said. “A scientist records what he
observes. If you don’t work methodically and write down what you
observe, you’re not a scientist. You’re just playing around.” I’ve
been recording my observations ever since.
I soon lost interest in the other gifts, but getting that chemistry
set was a life-changing experience. My mother told me years later
that she and my dad had hoped that the chemistry set would
hold my interest for at least a few weeks. As it turned out, it held
my interest a bit longer. With my dad’s help, I built a chemistry
workbench in the basement, and later a photographic darkroom.
I scrounged equipment and chemicals from every source I could
think of, and saved up for things that required cash. I spent every
spare moment in that lab, and went on to major in chemistry in
college and graduate school. Even now, more than 40 years later, I
have a chemistry lab in the basement. It’s a much better lab than
the one I had back in the 1960s, but the work habits I learned then
stand me in good stead now.
What I experienced that Christmas morning was repeated in
millions of other homes through the years as boys (and, alas,
only a few girls) opened their first chemistry sets. From the 1930s
through the 1960s, chemistry sets were among the most popular
Christmas gifts, selling in the millions. It’s said that in the 1940s
and 1950s there was a chemistry set in nearly every household
where there was a child. Even as late as the 1970s, chemistry
sets remained popular and were on display in every toy store
and department store. And then something bad happened. By
the 1980s, chemistry sets had become a dying breed. Few stores
carried them, and most of those sets that remained available
were pale shadows of what chemistry sets had been back in the
glory days.
The decline of chemistry sets had nothing to do with lack
of interest. Kids were and are as interested as ever. It was
society that had changed. Manufacturers and retailers became
concerned about liability and lawsuits, and “chemical” became
a dirty word. Most chemistry sets were “defanged” to the point
of uselessness, becoming little more than toys. Some so-called
“chemistry sets” nowadays are actually promoted as using “no
heat, no glass, and no chemicals,” as if that were something to be
proud of. They might just as well promote them as “no chemistry.”Even the best chemistry set that is still sold, the $200 Thames
& Kosmos Chem C3000, is an unfortunate compromise among
cost, liability, and marketability. The Chem C3000 kit lacks such
essential equipment as a balance and a thermometer, provides
little glassware, and includes only the tiny amounts of chemicals
needed to do unsatisfying micro-scale chemistry experiments.
Despite these criticisms, the C3000 kit is a good choice for giving
late elementary school or early middle school students their
first exposure to hands-on chemistry lab work. It allows kids to
produce bright colors and stinky smells, which after all are the
usual hooks that draw kids into chemistry. The problem is that
that’s not enough.Laboratory work is the essence of chemistry, and measurement
is the essence of laboratory work. A hands-on introduction to real
chemistry requires real equipment and real chemicals, and real,
quantitative experiments. No existing chemistry set provides
anything more than a bare start on those essentials, so the
obvious answer is to build your own chemistry set and use it to do
real chemistry.Everything you need is readily available, and surprisingly
inexpensive. For not much more than the cost of a toy chemistry
set, you can buy the equipment and chemicals you need to get
started doing real chemistry. Of course, the main reason for
that is the absence of the hidden liability surcharge. If you buy a
chemistry set and burn yourself with the alcohol lamp, you might
sue the maker of the chemistry set. If you buy an alcohol lamp by
itself and burn yourself, you have no one else to blame.So what about the very real dangers involved in serious chemistry
lab work? After all, some of the experiments in this book use
concentrated acids, flammable liquids, corrosives, and poisons. In
one experiment we manufacture napalm, for heaven’s sake. Will
readers of this book be dropping like flies, blowing themselves
up, burning the house down, or growing extra arms? Of course
not. Dangers can be dealt with. One of the recurring lessons
throughout this book is the importance of assuming personal
responsibility for useful but dangerous actions—understanding
the specific risks and taking the necessary steps to minimize or
eliminate them.It was a Lionel/Porter/Chemcraft chemistry set, and the exact model I’d asked for. The biggest
one, with dozens of chemicals and hundreds of experiments. Glassware, an alcohol lamp, a balance,
even a centrifuge. Everything I needed to do real chemistry. I instantly forgot about the rest of my
presents, even the BB gun. I started reading the manual, jumping from one experiment to another.
I carefully examined each of the chemical bottles. The names of the chemicals were magical.
Copper sulfate, sodium carbonate, sulfur, cobalt chloride, logwood, potassium ferricyanide,
ferrous ammonium sulfate, and dozens more.