Chemistry Sets for Adults? 322
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?
For adults? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:For adults? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:For adults? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:For adults? (Score:2, Funny)
I loved chemistry in high school and regret i never followed it up. Actually the real life of a chemical engineer is probably equally boring as that of a computer programmer, but hey i can fantasize. Can't you just see the dinner party conversation? "Crank... um um um um yeah crank yeah crank don't got nothin on my hydropsychotic pseudomethephedrineactose-sulfate-2,4,5... that's like like 245 bpm heart rate and and and "
Why do we need these? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:sig (Score:2)
Re:sig (Score:2)
Re:sig (Score:2)
Re:sig (Score:2)
http://www.asdasd.com/asd/asd/asdsd/gfdf/ger/gd
in their post... now those are broken up too
Re:sig (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, as moderation of this post shows, both of them are unfortunately also rather useful for trolling, so I'm not sure how long you'll be able to use these.
Re:sig (Score:2)
Couldn't the original
Re:sig (Score:2)
Essential oil extraction (Score:5, Interesting)
limonene (Score:3, Informative)
It smells fantastic, but it's a pretty potent solvent and can irritate the hell out of your digestive tract.
Re:limonene (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Essential oil extraction (Score:2)
Re:Essential oil extraction (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Essential oil extraction (Score:2)
People used to know when chem classes were in session just by the smell the lab experients leave on your hair and clothes.
Re:Essential oil extraction (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't advocate using most essential oils in food. You could use them in absolutely microscopic amounts -- but most kitchens/chefs don't have the tools, time or inclination to measure out correct amounts of essential oils. And leaving out the "potentially physically unsafe" part of it, essential oils are so strong in flavor and scent that they will easily overwhelm the other flavors in a dish.
That's why most commonly used "food safe" extracts have an ingredient list that goes something like "distilled water, alcohol, whatever oil". The water provides a buffer.
Re:Essential oil extraction (Score:2)
Yuck.
CBS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Chemistry Set (Score:5, Informative)
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.
do you really want to do titrations? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:do you really want to do titrations? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:do you really want to do titrations? (Score:3, Interesting)
A guy I worked with once told me "if you're cutting up a steak for people to sample, don't cut it into little cubes...cut it into long, thin strips...it tastes better because it provides a greater surface area for {big long enzyme in the saliva} to work with". (He then told me, "I learned that in the Organic-Chemistry-for-Chefs Class that I took last year". (And, yes, he really used the phrase "organic chemistry".)). Of course, I immediately put this to a field test with about 5 people (including myself) as test subjects. Sure enough, he was correct...the same steak -- when cut into long thin strips -- tastes better than the when it's cut into an volumetrically equivalent cube.
Slashdot: News for Dealers... (Score:5, Funny)
i was gonna mod this up (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Slashdot: News for Dealers... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Slashdot: News for Dealers... (Score:2, Informative)
check Overgrow [overgrow.com] for all your hydro,organic,chem, etc needs
My wife got me one :) (Score:4, Informative)
She gave me bookmarks after chrismas...
Good list of kits: http://www.hobbytron.net/electronickits.html [hobbytron.net]
I have the 300-on-1 which is $70 and is solderless.
Also check out http://www.kitguy.com/ [kitguy.com] - seems to be a definitive resource...
Re:My wife got me one :) (Score:2)
If you realy wan't to.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Amonia isn't that hard to make,
Ethanol's quite easy too (just don't get caught!)
Acids are a bit trickier.... but not that hard.
It'll give you lots of practice nad help if WW3 breaks out(or if you need any 'added-extras' for a night out).
Things like the anarchists cook book [come.to] should help point you in the right direction.
Re:If you realy wan't to.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If you realy wan't to.... (Score:2)
There are more reputable texts out there to learn from.
Re:If you realy wan't to.... (Score:5, Informative)
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...
Nitrogen triiodide (Score:4, Informative)
The best explosive recipe in the book is one that the author discounts in passing- nitrogen triiodide [bris.ac.uk], or NI3. (Actually, the structure is NI3-NH3, where the NH3 is bound to the NI3 electrostatically by what resemble hydrogen bonds.) According to the Cookbook a fly landing on it will set it off (which is probably true, although I never succeeded in getting a fly to cooperate). It claims it's too useless for any serious consideration when planning your anarchy. It might not be good for that, but it's great for pranks. [armory.com] I've had so much fun with that stuff. The secret to NI3 is DO NOT MAKE TOO MUCH OF IT. That way you can keep your fingers. [wisc.edu] A gram is way too much. Just take a few iodine crystals and put them under ammonia, and presto, it turns into this black powder. If you keep it under the ammonia, it's actually quite stable. When not under ammonia (even when under pure water) it might go off at any moment. Pick it up from the ammonia with a plastic eyedropper, and deposit the black sludge on some surface. Once dry it rapidly loses its NH3 adduct and becomes extremely sensitive to shock, decomposing explosively producing N2 and I2. Don't get traces of it on your clothes or skin, or you'll be treated to a continuous snap-crackle-pop of microscopic explosions (quite annoying).
Finding references on it is difficult- it's almost like people don't want to do research on it. It's probably unstable because the iodine atoms are huge compared to the nitrogen. Congestion around the central N forces the molecule into a planar shape, with repulsive interactions among the three iodines, so it's unhappy for steric reasons. One thing I did find out was that the stuff turns bright orange if you leave it under the ammonia for a long time (like a month). This is probably because it picks up additional NH3 adducts.
Re:Nitrogen triiodide (Score:3, Interesting)
I used filter paper too, until I found a much better substitute- kitty litter! Specifically, that kind of kitty litter that clumps into a tight ball when it gets wet. Dries the stuff out quickly, confines it really well in a tight clump, and transmits shock evenly to all the precipitate at once- so you get huge noisy explosions with a good report- and disgusting iodinated kitty litter flung all over your backyard! None of the snap crackle business you get when the stuff is exposed to the open air. Of course you shouldn't ever do this, ever.
Explosions aside, iodine itself is fun. I dropped a crystal on a counter surface once (this was when I was a chemist at a generic drug lab) and I noticed it a few hours later. So I picked it up. Of course by now there was a stain on the counter around where it had been. I wiped it up, but it came back.
The janitor came in, saw the stain, and wiped it away. Within a minute- the stain was back! So he wiped it again. Scrub scrub scrub. As soon as he turned his back- there it was again! Scrub scrub scrub. It kept coming back- and it was getting darker even as you looked at it! I put a thiosulfate-soaked paper towel on it and told him not to worry about it.
I felt bad for the people who cleaned that place. One of the tablets they made there was phenazopyridine, which is a drug women take for urinary tract infections (it's a urinary tract analgesic). This is one of the azo dyes, which means it has an -N=N- azo bond in it. All these compounds have an intense color. Pure phenazopyridine itself is a dark red powder, but in trace amounts, or when it's been dissolved in alcohol, it turns an intense yellow. (Which is a good thing, since urine is the same color- actually, that's probably why that compound is used for this purpose.)
EVERYTHING in that place was yellow. People would track that stuff all over the place. There was a yellow streak going down the center of the hallway, the chairs and tables had yellow marks everywhere, the books had yellow fingerprints on them, it was a thin film all over everything and everybody. Even things at home started turning yellow. The tiniest crystal would get on you and that was the end of it.
And don't even get me started on my idiot boss at that place, who inadvertently rediscovered the formula for dynamite while trying to come up with an FDA-approvable procedure for a selenium assay on vitamin tablets! What a mess that was! But this post is already getting too long.
Much later I met someone who told me a story about a friend of theirs, who had some leftover phenazopyridine tablets and had noticed the intense color. She actually dyed her hair with the stuff for Halloween!!! Holy crap! Then (surprise, surprise) she couldn't get it out of her hair, so she eventually called the drug manufacturer to ask for advice. They were no help- in fact they couldn't stop laughing at her! (You can actually kill the stain with a solution of sodium dithionite, but this smells so evil we didn't even consider it an option for cleaning the floors. They should have just told her to shave her head and scrub her scalp with lots of rubbing alcohol.) I couldn't believe my ears when I heard that story. Her whole house must still be yellow.
Re:If you realy wan't to.... (Score:2)
If you are so good with high pressure process plant, building catalyst beds, pumping hot nitrogen and so forth, that ammonia isn't hard to make, you hardly need a Chemistry 101 kit.
Of course, if you just mean "extract from something that already contains it", that's a piece of cat's piss. Literally.
How to win a Darwin Award (Score:3, Funny)
2. Light fuse.
3. Get away.
4. (Your heirs) profit!
sugestion (Score:4, Funny)
My All-time favorite (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:My All-time favorite (Score:5, Funny)
Me: "I want one of those ruby-laser kits."
Him: "No. What about a prism?"
Me: "I want one of those sets that has all the chemicals."
Him: "No. What about a prism?"
Me: "I want one of those magnets that can lift a small car."
Him: "No. What about a prism?"
I got a *lot* of prisms. By the time I was eight, I had about a dozen of varied shapes and sizes.
alright (Score:3, Funny)
or
you take a big ol' jar of gasoline, add styrofoam until you get a play-doh like mixture. what you have is napa----------
oops, you were asking for suggestions. I thought you wanted to know what I did.
Re:alright (Score:3, Informative)
I just got my own adult chemistry kit. (Score:4, Funny)
It's a home-brew kit for making my own beer
Re:I just got my own adult chemistry kit. (Score:3, Interesting)
Nah.. I got the real deal. I helped a buddy do a Mr. Brew thing because he's not too quick on the uptake with reading directions and sterilization, but I went out and got the real deal. Four gallon pot for boiling wort, 2 6.5 gallon buckets, one for fermentation and one for bottling, bottle capper, hydrometer, proper thermometer, siphon tubing, etc.
It'll be a week and a half before the first batch is done, but damn do I have fun watching the little CO2 bubbles coming out of the airlock
Re:I just got my own adult chemistry kit. (Score:2, Interesting)
I hear that a glass bottle works better (flavor-wise) for fermentation than the plastic buckets. May just be hear-say, though. Anyway, that's pretty much what my roommate has going -- pot for boiling wort (4gal is probably overkill, since you don't need the full amount of water while you're boiling your wort), 5gal glass bottle for fermentation, 5gal bucket for bottling, all the trappings for sterilization, bottling, etc. Makes a good brew. I'm slowly working my way through this first batch while he's out of town on vacation. Mmm ... beer for me.
For me, it's too much work, but he's into it. Sounds like after the next batch of pre-packaged wort, he's going to try his hand at doing everything from scratch. Fine by me, since even a bad homebrew is better than a Bud.
Modern chem sets useless (Score:4, Insightful)
Blow Stuff Up! (Score:2, Interesting)
To blow things up.
There is a solution, though.
A hand full of sodium + a large lake = very nice explosions.
You can learn the importance of keeping alkaline metals away from water, the amount of energy created with the mixing of H2Oand sodium, and why you should never stick sodium in someone's bathing suit.
Can you say, "Win Win."
Re:Blow Stuff Up! (Score:2)
Re:Blow Stuff Up! (Score:2)
I was toying with the old "blowing stuff up" bit when I was in highschool. Decided to whip up a batch of ammonium nitrogen triiodide in the basement.
I managed to procure some pure iodine crystals from a drugstore (I still don't know why (a) they had them, or (b) why they sold them to me).
Unfortunately my ammonia wasn't strong enough to react particularly well, but it was good enough that I got the reaction going a bit - I left it in the sink tub and went off to watch TV for a bit - while I was gone, everything dried out...
When I was going back into the room, I flipped the lights on and heard something between a pop and a bang. It's amazing how unstable that stuff is - certainly not good to play around with...
Turns out that if I had borrowed some ammonia from my friend's blueprinting machine, I probably would've got a much better reaction (it was enough to knock him out cold when he decided to smell the ammonia).
To add to the problems, the iodine crystals slowly sublimed over a few weeks while in the container on my shelf, turning the container a nasty red/purple color, and probably didn't do me much good as I inhaled the stuff...
N.
Re:Blow Stuff Up! (Score:2)
Yeah, it should be "handful" of LITHIUM...
Learn to home brew… (Score:5, Insightful)
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....
Re:Learn to home brew… (Score:2)
Re:Jackboots and Uzis? (Score:2)
Re:Jackboots and Uzis? (Score:3, Interesting)
YES! My uncle had a friend buy what he called a "nautical generator" for his boat on ebay (he's not very computer inclined). And a few months later the FBI came to the guys house and they wanted to know what he wanted it for and where it was etc ... Kind of weird because its difficult to think of any nefarious uses for a generator.
Re:Jackboots and Uzis? (Score:2)
"Do you honestly think "suits" would turn up at someone's door over such a thing?"
Buying hummus and charcoal [villagevoice.com] can get the suits at your door, man, much less a chemistry set.
Besides, do you realize that 7,600 people died last year from non-steroidal painkillers (eg, asprin)? Do you realize that between deaths resulting from cirrhosis of the liver and drunk driving fatalities there are about 48,000 deaths a year in the U.S.? Have you seen the hysteria over ecstacy?
Yes, ordering things from chemistry supply companies can get a suit at your door.
And if they did, would it be a problem if you had nothing to hide?
If we have to resort to this logic we're already screwed
Re:Jackboots and Uzis? (Score:2)
Aside from that, whether or not buying chemicals will get the Feds at your door depends strongly on what you buy. If you buy potassium chloride, probably not. If you buy sulfuric and picric acid, you should probably expect to be hearing the pitter pat of little feet on your doorstep.
300 in One Electronics Kits (Score:3, Interesting)
The experimenters labs are good for starting out - having a structured set of experiments to build, and yes, you can even go beyond those simple experiments and build simple experiments which are not in the book. For the most fun, however, I like the prototype breadboards. One of those with appropriate power supplies and other test equipment is good for analog, digital or combination circuitry. Add a few experimenters parts kits from Jameco and you are in business.
As for Chemistry kits, I think just buying the labware you need and the various chemicals etc. is a better way to go than a pre-fabricated kit.
The real interesting stuff however would be a molecular biology lab. Slice and splice DNA and build your very own new and interesting critter! Yes, you too can build your own miltary grade anthrax, plague or even smallpox. Add the THC gene to corn! Create that perfect paisley rose! Be the envy of everyone on your block! hmmmm I better quit now. Seriously, it is probably not all that hard to build a DNA synthesizer. Why not convert an ink-jet printer ? DNA = 4 molecules, many printers have 4 ink tanks. How tiny of a drop can you print???
Z
As a Chemist.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:As a Chemist.... (Score:2)
Take the first quarter or semester of general chemistry at a local two year community college...if you like it, then finish the general coursework, then figure out if you next want to take physical, organic, inorganic......
The Kitchen Cabinet (Score:2)
Re:The Kitchen Cabinet (Score:3, Informative)
I suppose being outdoors would substitute for the lack of a fume hood, and a garden hose would be ok for eyewash. However, your never suppose to work alone in a lab, because if something goes wrong you don't have anyone to help you. How do you find your way to an eye wash when you can't see?
A freshman lab manual from any college bookstore will give you an idea what some simple experiments are, and what you learn from them. Reading through one would be a good place to start to figure out what you would want to try. But, it's still best if your assisted somehow. And I won't recommend anything to do on your own...
There are some people who need to actually see something happen in order to believe it's true or let it sink in, and that's where lab work really helps learning. But, the number of people I've seen cut themselves, spill stuff, or start accidental fires pretty much tells me, it's best to do in a lab, with an instructor. At least the instructor knows the risk of each experiment, and knows what to do when things go wrong.
The goal of chemistry lab classes is more to teach good lab techniques and lab safety. Learning chemistry in the lab is only a secondary benefit, most of the learning actually comes from books and lectures. It's the physical skills of handling materials that's learned in lab, and without instruction there isn't much learning you can do on these skills on your own.
National Security (Score:2)
something to strike fear in their hearts in any number of areas.
you can imagine the conversations.
Do it piecemeal (Score:3, Informative)
Forget the chem set (Score:2, Interesting)
and thought it would be fun to acquire a chemistry set just to play around with and maybe learn a few things from
If you want an adult-style chemistry set, try one of those home beer brew kits or a home winemaking kit. You get to monkey around with various ingredients and after its all done you reap the rewards. err.. "Reap Responsibly"..
One Word (Score:2)
Do they even still sell chemistry sets? (Score:2)
Oh... my... (Score:2)
Usually those stains [everything2.com] are kind of yellowish. What the hell are you?
If you want good chemistry experiments, (Score:2, Funny)
Re:If you want good chemistry experiments, (Score:3, Informative)
be warned however, creating explosives, or drugs for that matter, is nothing a chemistry kit could archieve most of the time.. the only synthetic drug I am aware of that could be made this way would be GHB, which can be easily produced by mixing two chemicals, then heating them carefully. As for explosives.. creating things that go boom without the exact knowledge of what you do often result in the quick and impressive end of the creator's life. :)
Re:If you want good chemistry experiments, (Score:2)
Well equipped university libraries should have books on the chemistry of fireworks--they're not a bad source of ideas. Information on explosives can be found at schools with good chem. eng. or mining programs.
Be very careful with organic synthesis of any kind, in any quantity. Plan ahead--have a fire extinguisher on hand, and work where there is good ventilation. Don't work where nobody will hear you scream. A litre of solvent triggered with a blasting cap will throw shards of glass a couple hundred feet, except for the bits that are slowed down by your body. Less spectacular errors can be just as fatal. Consider yourself warned.
300-in-one, I mean 299-in-one, I mean 298... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure was fun to have my own 10mw-ish AM station, though.
Frankly if I were to do it all over again I'd just go buy a bunch of components, a soldering iron and a few prototyping boards. They still make those prototyping boards, don't they?
Re:300-in-one, I mean 299-in-one, I mean 298... (Score:2)
I'm sitting right beside a 300 in 1 kit (or, from where I'm looking at it, "300 in 1 elektronische projektdoos"). Prototyping boards are great, definitely more flexible. They have spring-loaded ones with horizontal and vertical tracks so you just "plug in" your components. No soldering needed. I've been using these a lot!
I had a flashback to my first crystal set radio. I ran a big wire (antenna) to a tree to pick up strong signals. Then the radio works without any battery. How can anyone say that's not neat!
If you have some time to kill, go build one [google.com]!
environment, geology (Score:4, Interesting)
Other areas that involve chemistry and makes a good hobby are geology and mineralogy. You can collect samples, characterize them, learn about crystallography, and also analyze the samples chemically.
And if you get seriously involved, you can actually accomplish new science in areas like those, even with fairly modest resources. There are lots of publications dedicated to both the hobbyist and the professionals in those areas; look at them at your local university library to get some ideas.
Check out the Student Science Service (Score:5, Informative)
Expect company unasked (Score:2)
sciplus (Score:4, Interesting)
Warning: prepare to spend at least an hour looking at this site.
Photo Darkroom: the adult chemistry set (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Interesting experiments: Silvering a mirror (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Interesting experiments: Silvering a mirror (Score:2, Insightful)
Develop your own photographs [about.com] (fun, but not tedious enough). Better yet, create your own PCBs [telia.com] (fun, and very tedious). As with the mirrors, you end up with something worthwhile when you're done.
If you're just looking for some pointless fun, drop round pennies in Tinning solution. See how many people you can trick into thinking it's a nickel.
adult chemistry set? (Score:2)
Who needs it? (Score:4, Informative)
Examples: ammonia (cleaning), potassium nitrate (fertilizer), calcium cloride (road salt), ammonium nitrate (fertilizer), various petroleum distillates (everything), all sorts of metals, various exotic metal oxides (dry paint powders and ceramic glazes), sodium hypoclorite (bleach), hydrofluoric acid (for glass etching), hydrochloric acid, calcium sulfate (gypsum), etc... you can get almost any chemical you need for any purpose from common products, or manufacture it from common products. You just have to know what you're doing.
Re:Who needs it? (Score:5, Informative)
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!
Alfa Aesar (Score:4, Informative)
May I suggest a book instead? (Score:4, Interesting)
But perhaps I could suggest a book, instead:
Laboratory Experiments for General Chemistry, 4ed
by Hunt, Block, and McKelvy
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/det
This one is extremely useful in that it:
(1) Lists the equipment needed for each (so you can go through, find the experiments that you can do)
(2) Lists tons of safety and first-aid information, with standardized icons for each item
(3) provides lab reports to fill out, which will help you understand the experiments
(4) The experiments are actually rather standard; not all of them require special equipment.
One word of caution: After produced the book, my brother noted that one of the experiments, standard to most College Chemistry Lab courses, is wrong:
Experiment 13, the Burning of a Candle.
My brother claims that the experiment purports to demonstrate the stoichiometry of combustion; in reality, it demonstrates the heat given off by candles, and the ideal gas law PV=NRT. He said that he demonstrated this by attempting the experiment in several different ways, one with 3 candles close together (burning hotter), one with three candles farther apart (burning cooler).
I haven't done that experiment myself in his way. But I thought I should mention that.
Wear your goggles! (Score:2)
Buy old ones off Ebay (Score:2)
Another good source of chemicals are some of the fertilizers you can get at a local nursery. If you have a good local nursery you can find things like ammonium nitrate, phosphoric acid, sulfur, etc. Professional growers often need to mix specific fertilizer "recipes" with these ingredients, which happen to have lots of other uses besides growing plants.
Contact explosives! (Score:2)
Ahh home chemistry is great
Re:Contact explosives! (Score:3, Funny)
Surprised at the recipies and locations (Score:3, Informative)
If you wants to get really crazy/stupid start with phenol instead of toluene and you will end up with picric acid. Opposites attrack and like things repel and this has more negatively charged things around the benzene ring and is thus much less stable -- especially when it dries! Once again, DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME without proper adult supervision (and that means someone preferably with a chemistry degree).
And the feds wonder where people learn this shit!
Re:Why? (Score:2, Funny)
Just Joking...
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
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 [leeds.ac.uk]
Demonstration Lab [wisc.edu]
Lecture Demonstrations [indiana.edu]
Chemistry Resources [lapeer.org]
Some Sources of chemicals:
CHEM Scientific [chemscientific.com]
Fisher [fisheredu.com]
Sagent Welch [sargentwelch.com]
Carolina [carolina.com]
I am certain you will get lots more from other Slashdaughters...
Re:Why? (Score:2, Funny)
I guess you never went to public school
you might learn more (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Keep a Lab book? Yes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Good logbook habits avoid the WTF syndrome.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Doing actual experiments is important for chemistry in particular because otherwise learning the nomenclature is next to impossible. This is not the case as much for intro physics.
When I was learning all that stuff, we had all these tables with the IUPAC naming conventions and such, and none of it really connected togething into something coherent. But once you actually get working with a dozen chemicals at once, you have to catalogue your results some how and then the real relationships between anions, cations, acids, bases, etc are made clear to you. It's even better if you to chemistry experiments with a friend helping. (Joke not intended ;-) You have to coordinate your plans and communicate results to each other.
I know from experience that it is at least 10X easier to learn chemistry in terms of the nomenclature, methods, and overall properties of different structures by lab work than by reading.
And it works. It's been two years since I've had to take a chemistry course and I still know all my common anions (formula, charge, name) including the names for versions with up to one extra or two less oxygens off my heart.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
A much better preparation for a chemistry course would be brushing up your statistical mathematics and linear algebra, mixing chemicals is engineering, not chemistry nowadays.