I think its sad that our society has become so divorced from reality that Uranium- a naturally occurring element- is considered a "crazy" thing for kids to have

I think its sad that our society has become so divorced from reality that Uranium- a naturally occurring element- is considered a "crazy" thing for kids to have. It takes huge amounts of uranium and processing and a lot of technology to make a bomb, most of the difficulty has nothing to do with the uranium. You can get uranium simply by buying old fiestaware. The paint they used in certain colors used uranium as part of the pigment. If you have a geiger counter you can make noise with it. (not that I think there's much useful to do with uranium in a chemistry set, but then I was always poor at chemistry.) It is just a real shame that "uranium" has become a scary word.