I learned how to make and use gunpowder in the fifth grade thanks to my home chemistry set. KNO3 + S + C = boom!
I happily and safely (I have all my digits) made my own fireworks for the 4th. Today, I’d probably get arrested.
Get a load of this chemistry set.
JAYFK writes:
No, your eyes do not deceive you. Yes, it is a chemistry kit with no chemicals. Let’s dig deeper by looking at the kit’s description.
- Crystals… of what?!?! There are NO chemicals in the kit! Is the 10 & up set supposed to create matter from nothing?
- I have a PhD in analytical chemistry and I’m at a loss as to how to do chromatography with NO chemicals. At. A. Loss.
- Growing plants. Surely, that is chemical-free? No, actually, it’s not. Soil alone is teeming with chemicals and critters. The chemical water will be required. In fact, there is a lot of biochemistry in growing stuff and all of that biochemistry takes chemicals.
- It is a mystery how you can have slime and gook without chemicals. Boston’s Museum of Science show’s just how easy it is to explore slime chemistry, but it takes chemicals like glue, water and borax.
- Bubbles? The kit contains soapy water? FALSE ADVERTISING! That’s water (a chemical), likely a surfactant (another chemical) and probably other stuff (also chemicals).
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Our local (Broome, W.Australia) ankle-biting vandals have no trouble creating noise and a mess with swimming pool Chlorine and another ingredient or two. Running rings around the local ‘law’ too. And many didn’t bother with much school either.
Actually, not very funny.
Thanks for the laugh, it’s just like AGW without the facts!!! 😉
Anthony,
I happily and safely (I have all my digits) made my own fireworks for the 4th. Today, I’d probably get arrested.
I am happy that you have all your digits, and other appendages, and also children who played around with you on the 4th are as happy for themselves.
In Greece we have crazy fireworks during easter , mainly at midnight when the priests sing the “Christ is risen”hymn. Custom has it that a lot of noise should be produced to imitate the earthquake noises from the resurection, and his is done with home made fireworks. We have fatalities every year. Yesterday a 7 year old boy died who got a misfired firework on his face which then went and fractured a stone pillar outside the church. Fortunately for the boy, because he probably would have been a paraplegic and worse for life. Two lives were destroyed because the young man who fired the firework, 25 years old, is now facing involuntary manslaughter charges.
Another child of ten has lost one eye and is in serious condition from a firework a girl of ten threw at him by mistake.
Fireworks are forbidden, the making and selling of them, but it is impossible to go against the custom without arresting a huge percentage of the male population.
In some villages it is like war. The name of a village in Chios is called Vrontou, meaning thunder, because of the noise the fireworks make. The put special covers on the roofs and windows during easter in that village.
So how much did this chemical-free chemistry set cost? Can you buy chemicals separately? I’m comparing it to what I remember of the chemistry set my father bought me about 1954. This set is junk. I guess that’s appropriate. Junk-science has taken over.
I, too had some pretty alarming exothermic reactions with my chemistry set (which did have some basic elements, mixtures and compounds), but most were unintended!
The above “chemistry” set is yet another example of modern fanaticism in protecting kiddies lest they harm themselves. Yet how are they (poor innocents) to learn from their mistakes? It is no wonder that most children today are ignorant of the realities that life can throw their way.
The children should also never be exposed to something composed of 65% dimethyl siloxane (hydroxy-terminated polymers with boric acid), 17% silica (crystalline quartz), 9% Thixatrol ST (castor oil derivative), 4% polydimethylsiloxane, 1% decamethyl cyclopentasiloxane, 1% glycerine, and 1% titanium dioxide.
That could be lethal.
Children these days are not safe unless they are strapped in the back of a Prius watching a Greenpeace video on their iPhone.
In my day you could go to the chemists and get powdered magnesium by the ounce, carbon black in pouches, picric acid and even the makings for nitrated-cellulose. I guess I’m getting on.
PS.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_putty
Kind of like playing in an “air-band”…
As a kid, chemistry was mixing anything and everything I could get my hands on. Flammables were my fav. Empty test tubes are an attractive nuisance, probably more of a hazard than any ‘safe’ chemicals they might have provided.
Memories LOL!
It is sad how ignorance, litigation and law suits have taken the fun out of things.
For my youngest 6th birthday party (years ago) as an activity the children each built their own (easy level) Estees rocket (using crazy glue), painted it up (with fast drying acetone based nail polish), loaded the rocket engine, packed the igniter and launched it.
Some where so unbalanced they immediately went nearly horizontal.
Ever play dodge missile with eight 6 year olds?
It was a blast, all the rockets were lost into the forest around the back yard, none returned from Space. The kids had a great time.
PS. I can remember one of my older brothers running a Jet-X powered sled in the living room when I was a child. Only happened once, loud noise and way too much smoke to hide from our parents.
Learning safety was as important as the chemistry. 50 years ago we lived in a free country and that meant some risk went with the lessons. Now we live in a police state to reduce risk. What a loss in all learning, and the prisons are over flowing. Is the “safety” worth the cost? pg
Cool looking goggles. Our kids will look like real scientists as they do temperature experiments with water and ice chips.
Oh, wait a minute, no temperature experiments allowed. That would require a thermometer with alchohol, or (gasp) mercury.
This chemistry set is safe, biodegradable, and contains no chemicals, so perfect for the tender planet.
60 “Fun activities” with no chemicals in a chemistry set ! The one fun activity would be tossing the whole thing onto a fire and watching combustion. Fun yes but not so good for our tender planet. Bugger.
Well actually Anthony, if you read carefully, all the answers to your questions are in the ad. They say there’s no chemicals in the box. They didn’t say there’s no chemicals used in the experiments! In fact, the opposite:
“60 + fun activities with home science and kitchen chemistry.”
Get it? Why should they put chemicals in the chemistry set when they can dupe you into paying for the instructions (which are pretty crappy compared to what you can find with Google…) and you get the added benefit of supplying your own chemicals.
Crystals? Got salt in the kitchen?
Growing plants? they’ve supplied a nice plastic dish. all you do is add your own dirt and seeds.
As for slime, yes, most households have glue, water and borax. Now they have a chemistry set with instructions too. Or did that page just have a link to the Boston Museum of Science?
Bubbles… now read carefully Anthony, these aren’t just any sort of bubbles. They are THREE DIMENSIONAL bubbles. Way different from regular bubbles. In fact you can see the little jar of three dimensional fluid with the three dimensional bubble surface dispenser inside. The experiment of course has to do with filling the bubble skins with air, which is not chemistry per se, I would think it more in the realm of fluid mechanics.
Seriously this is well beyond a rip off, and it isn’t IMHO even targeted at 10 year olds. This piece of con artist thievery is aimed at the elderly grand parents or aunts and uncles who want to buy a present and think this is safe as well as educational. I doubt any average 10 year old would be duped by this and the marketing company damn well knows it.
My father, an MD, bought me a chemistry set when I was 10. I still recall the day that my sister, two neighbor kids and I decided to make artificial life.
No, to my knowledge, nothing alive ever grew out of it, but years later the stain of the stuff that we created was still on the sidewalk outside our home. No one could ever get it out. We also made some smelly mixture that sent us running away until the fumes died down.
Those were the days.
A toy with an infinite “shelf life” after all old style chemistry sets would get damp in them and not work.
jsbrodhead says:
April 29, 2011 at 10:40 pm
As a kid, chemistry was mixing anything and everything I could get my hands on. >>>
Yeah, my first serious chemistry was trying to build a solid fuel rocket. Doesn’t take much experimenting before you learn that its really hard to make a solid fuel rocket, but an exploding rocket… followed by why even bother with the rocket, explosives are way more fun anyway….
You learn all sorts of other skills too. For instance, we accidently ignited some fuel mixture..uhm… prematurely… and burnt a hole in the kitchen floor. The brand new, installed yesterday, Mom saved for almost a year to get the exact linoleum she wanted, kitchen floor. Model paints, exacto knives, soldering iron, scrap linoleum dug out of the garbage… For the next ten years I cringed every time she swept the floor, figuring for sure she would spot it. Never did.
On the other hand when she walked in the door and looked at me and my buddy, the first words out of her mouth were… what happened to your eyebrows?
Oops.
The dumbing down is worse than we thought…
The false ad caters to our “chemophobic” society. “Chemicals are bad.” Period. That is the message anyway. Too bad children are so brainwashed and given false scientific information.
I happily and safely (I have all my digits) made my own fireworks … ☺ Yeah, me too. Gunpowder was a hoot. In our “gunpowder years,” my bro and I made an actual pipe gun out of ~3/4-inch plumbing pipe that shot marbles powered by large firecrackers. Shot thru ½-inch plywood. Today, I’d probably get arrested. ☺ No kidding!! SWAT team….police…social and child-care services…
Lots of stoopid stuff in our society that pretends to be safe or “green” or “eco friendly.” I could puke reading most “green” and “eco friendly” ads today.
“Green” electric lawnmowers … that run on coal-generated power.
We try to make the world “safe” and “green” for the children and only mislead them with this sort of “chemistry set ” nonsense.
I can remember my first A level chemistry lab session making nitrobenzene in 1970. Boil up concentrated nitric and sulphuric acid. No mask, eye protection, gloves or suit!
There was NO better Christmas present than the full Gilbert chemistry set. I went nuts as a kid. I didn’t just have the lame alcohol lamp, I had a full bunsen burner and all the hardware from 1940s and 1950s chemistry labs. I would buy potassium chlorate and potassium permanganate from a local pharmacy. Making our own fireworks was the coolest thing a kid could do. I always engaged in the very dangerous practice of making flash powder but a few years ago I got interested in plain ol’ blackpowder. I no longer have the interest, time or patience for making fireworks…but blackpowder is still intriguing. I discovered ball milling. You can (correctly, by weight) combine KNO3, charcoal and sulfur and ball mill it for a day or two, then wet it and push it through a screen onto newspaper to dry. The result is very impressive. I use it to launch tennis balls high into the air from a PVC mortar and let the dogs chase them. Kids don’t get to play with the fun stuff anymore.
Are you people insane? Look at the box closely. There is more than enough materials and supplies there to once again prove AGW is for real and Michael Mann could surely use the cardboard box as a proxy to produce another hockey stick. Its a marvelous chemistry kit! It’s the same one that’s used in Climate Research labs the world over!
I doubt its necessary but… /sarc.
No one in Elfin Safety in Australia appears to have noticed that freely available “party poppers” are high-class detonators, yet… but the kids have.
However… anna v does paint a compelling canvas for general fireworks restrictions; and some of my own idiocy as a youngster endorses it; but a chemistry set (containing the fearsome chemicals!!!) does not have to be designed for big bangs to be both good fun and good primary education.
We always go one bridge too far.
I also learned to make gun powder, nitrocellulose and detonators by my father, in a distant past. Also had several chemistry sets (called The Little Chemist), and even back then my father used to upgrade the sets, to be able to do more interesting experiments.
Being taught this by my father, who knew what he was doing, made it safe, and no large scale accidents happened even when my father were absent. Even today, I would be able to perform dangerous chemistry in a safe way.
The problems often arise when young people today pick up recipes for explosives from the internet, and does not learn anything about safety, or understand the many complex reactions involved.
Sounds like post-normal science.
Note to self – this year’s Independence Day will be more fun if I remember to order the cannon fuse for staged displays this year.
I learned how to make thermite from my Dad when I was a kid, I guess he *correctly* judged I wouldn’t kill anybody (and somehow I managed not to even come close, like most people).
It’s been a long time since I made fireworks. They’re probably illegal, and the factory ones are cheap.