Mark Frauenfelder, Make magazine’s editor in chief, posted the preface of Robert Bruce Thompson’s latest book, the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry: All Lab, No Lecture recently on Boing Boing.
In the preface Thompson tells about receiving his first chemistry set from his parents one bright Christmas morning in 1964. “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,” he explains.
Thompson, the author of Building the Perfect PC, Astronomy Hacks, and the Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders, also explains that he set out to write this book after a conversation with his friend and neighbor Jasmine Littlejohn.
“If Jasmine was to do more than make pretty colors and stinky smells, if Jasmine was to do real chemistry, she’d need more than just access to a lab. She’d need detailed instructions and some sort of structured plan to guide her through the learning process. She’d need to learn how to use the equipment and how to handle chemicals safely. She’d need well-designed experiments that focused on specific aspects of laboratory work. In other words, she’d need a home chemistry lab handbook, one devoted to serious chemistry rather than just playing around.
My first thought was to get Jasmine one of the classic home chemistry books published back in the 30s, 40s, or 50s. Some of those were excellent, but all of them required chemicals—such as benzene, carbon tetrachloride, salts of mercury, lead, and barium, concentrated nitric acid, and so on—that were once readily available but are now very expensive or difficult to obtain.
In one sense, that wasn’t really a problem. I already had most of that stuff in my lab. But even the best of those old books would have required some serious red-lining before I’d have turned Jasmine loose with it. One, for example, suggested tasting highly toxic lead acetate (also known as “sugar of lead”) to detect its sweetness. Others were a bit casual about handling soluble mercury compounds or contained experiments that were potentially extremely dangerous.
You can read the rest of Thompson’s inspiring preface here.
Thompson’s new guide is for responsible teenagers to adults, folks who want to learn about chemistry by doing real, hands-on laboratory experiments. It isn’t for those who want to make fireworks or explosive.
I’m also giving away a free copy of the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry. All you have to do is post a comment about your favorite chemistry set and/or experiment and/or why you think hands-on chemistry education is important by May 12, 2008. You may be the lucky winner of my fair but arbitrary selection.
In other news, Kevin wins a copy “Google Apps Hacks” for posting his favorite Google app hack. Check out Kevin’s winning hack and the all the other hacks here.
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I got a chemistry set at a garage sale when I was twelve. I had to use in the garage or on the patio. It was fun learning how different things react to one another. Hands-on chemistry is important because kids can learn how to be safe, follow direction, and learn the basics of chemical reaction. It instills the scientific method and fun of experimentation up close.
I teach a science class at home, because schools are too slow to get around to covering substantive science concepts. Chemistry is particularly important as a bridge between the immediately observable (such as much of physics) and the non-instant-gratification sciences (such as much of biology.) Safety is also important - my high school chemistry teacher, though excellent, had burned half of his face in a lab accident!
We enjoyed the author's talk at the Maker Faire, and he brings an impressive depth of experience to the subject. The book is light on the usual 1000 pages of dreary exposition, but provides an indispensable tool for those who don't already have a well equipped lab and the experts to run it. Also, it offers much more real content than the cheap manuals found in entry-level sets.
I am a chemistry teacher and my students spend a lot of time in lab; however, many people do not have the opportunity to see how much fun chemistry can be unless they are given the appropriate information to "try it at home." Thanks for coming up with a resource to show the world that chemistry can be found in every realm of our everyday lives; you don't have to wear a lab coat with pocket protectors to experience the thrill of hands-on laboratory experiments! I utilize many effective, cheap, and quick experiments in my own classroom, and this book will serve as a valuable addition to my resource collection.
Back in the olden times, before every kid had access to a computer and an amazing wealth of programming languages by which to hack and make and explore, we geeky kids had chemistry sets. I was probably too young by far when I received my first set, complete with real glass test tubes and a small alcohol lamp. My naive parents, bless 'em, let me work alone in the garage on the experiments in the booklet. Of course, I tried things not in the book. Things I'd find in library books or wonder about on my own. I did get cut a couple of time, and burned once or twice, but it was the beginning of thinking hackishly for me. My own path led away from chemistry, but the sense of exploring, experimentation, and joy at doing something with my brain that resulted in something happening in the world outside my head, that has kept with me in the face of every problem I've faced since then.
I had several chemistry sets as a teenager (brands were Gilbert and Chemcraft), combining them and collecting more chemicals and equipment by frequenting local stores. By the time I took High School Chemistry in my Junior year I had enough in my own basement to set up a winning science fair project on digestive enzymes. Oddly enough, however, when I pursued Chemistry in college I was turned off by all the emphasis on textbook theory instead of old-fashioned 'wet' lab actions. Even though I finally earned a BS in Chemistry, I ended up as a computer programmer and am now a Database Administrator. I sometimes wonder how things might have changed had my college professors been more inclined to lab work instead of chalkboard theory...
My high school chemistry class was nothing but memorizing numbers; my dyslexic brain was all to happy to abandon the topic and pursue my education in art. That is, until I discovered a hands-on book called Caveman Chemistry. Everything changed. Instead of a table of numbers, chemistry became a story about people: inventors, artists, heroes. I'll never forget about William Perkin, who invented the first artificial dye, the color mauve. Natural purple was a costly dye, and Perkin knew his substitute was something big, so he boldly dropped out of college at the age of 18 to develop his product. I'll also never forget about the sensory experiences that brought chemistry home to me: the smells of distilling alcohol, the feel of washing my hands with my own lye soap, the hard-won sense of triumph after starting a stone-age fire.
Teaching basic chemistry in schools has to be hands-on if it is to be effective for some students, such as many with learning disorders, and many who simply need to see the science in action to become interested. I'm lucky to have discovered it on my own, and I hope that hands-on books can help others too. In a society where the word 'chemical' is automatically associated with corporations poisoning the planet, a deeper understand it needed.
My favorite chemistry experiment? The ones that "worked" so that I made an A in College Chem Lab. However, my son has had some fun in his Science class with chemicals changing pH of solutions and figuring out reactions. I'd love to give him this book and help him by fostering his exploration and imagination. He's only 11 but will be probably jumping to 7th or 8th grade Science (from 5th).
My home chemistry experiments were, as is the case for many teen boys, related to explosive reactions. It did give a lot of adrenaline but was also quite dangerous. Once me and my school mate were combining randomly some ingeredients in a tube. The reaction produced some gas, which turned out to be hydrogen. It was so effective that when we lit the gas, the tube exploded into tiny pieces. Fortunately we did it outside. :)
Looking back, it was rather unsafe chemistry, something not to be very proud of. I suppose that when kids have more hands-on experience with safe chemistry they might be less likely to experiment on their own. Unfortunately what we were taught at school was mainly based on theory and little practical knowledge.