4 ms·
Sadly as stated in the article alot of the chemicals your dads got to play with are no longer available at a consumer level and in that be it most protect the c
by Zenst 14y ago
Sadly as stated in the article alot of the chemicals your dads got to play with are no longer available at a consumer level and in that be it most protect the children approach was not even the main reason were in this state.
It is lamentable and whilst kids in the 60's could build bombs and other fun kids stuff of the time. Well if they did half of what kids back then did they would be labeled terrorists and packaged up as one, which is in many ways very very sad.
I must say the aspect of offering perfume type chemistry sets is a novel approach and I appaud that level of thinking. But for young boys who wish to see things go bang it is sadly not of much use.
Now maybe we could oneday get a digital chemistry set were you can relive all the old wonderful explosions and resctions. It's not like we don't know how every combination fo chemical in a 60's chemistry set will react in every permutation and it is also not like we don't have the processing power to do some of the cleverness in a way that is educational and appealing.
Still at least kids can buy gun-caps still and from those you can make bolt-bombs, bangers (with celotape and electic bang fuses) and also great fun added to the end of a dart with cotton wall around the shaft. So in many ways kids can still have ther bang fun and snappies are still available and great fun in pea-shooters.
But chemisty fun is one they just can't get until at school and then it's overly controlled with most being demostrations without the level of intereaction some need.
Heck if you had a place were us adults could go and play chemistry set like our old days - even if it is in a room were no chemicals can leave, well i'd know alot would be up for that.
But it is a balance between saftly and education and in many ways that balance is overly biased deeming everybody by default to be a mad drig producing, WMD making terrorist and that in itself is just sad.
- slurgfest 14y agoTerrorism is probably not nearly as important in this as the march of legal liability. If chemistry sets ever included all the stuff required for making a serious explosive, it has been decades since then. If you started a chain of chemical hackerspaces for adults (the neat idea you describe) and did not take strict measures to control your liability then sooner or later you could be sure of a suit from someone who injured himself. And the days have long passed when you could sell toys like "bag o'glass" to kids without facing epic liability.
- Zenst 14y agoYou right, liability and lawsuits are the crux realy. Makes you wonder how long until paper has printed warnings "handle with care - sharp edges may cut you" on it.
- pmiller2 14y agoSpeaking of glass, in Texas, you need a permit to own laboratory glassware. See http://www.crscientific.com/texas-glassware.html http://www.crscientific.com/texas-glassware.html .
- Zenst 14y agoWOW , thank you for highlighting that. Guess home brewers loved that law. Another case of everybody assumed to be some major drug lord making drugs again :(.
- anusinha 14y agoI've been thinking about a "digital chemistry set" for a while. It's something that would certainly be fun to play with and that we have all the information to do--chemical reactions follow established rules and exceptions could be hardcoded in. I've thought about an organic chemistry chemical program. If you're not familiar, a huge component of organic chemistry consists of memorizing and understanding reactions and their mechanisms, and reactivity of organic molecules. A digital lab where you could mix arbitrary compounds together and see what happens could be a powerful educational tool suitable for supplemental use with another ochem course/self study.
- einhverfr 14y agoWhen I was in college we did some thing like that for practising qualitative analysis before going into the lab (the computer was not the primary learning tool but a supplement). This of course helped me to go into the lab and perform all the right operations.... on all the wrong samples.....
- Karunamon 14y agoSomething like this already exists: http://www.modelscience.com/products.html?ref=home&link=chemlab#Screen%20Shots http://www.modelscience.com/products.html?ref=home&link=...