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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As a pre-teen in Nova Scotia, my neighbor was a was a teenage rifle champion. Accordingly, he had basically unlimited access to ammunition, which he would bring home, break off the bullets, and cache the gunpowder. After a point he had enough gunpowder to fill a plastic model of some now-defunct American aircraft carrier…into whose funnel he placed a 2-inch firecracker, and, lighting the fuse, shoved off into the waters of the reed-filled ditch along the (now defunct) railroad line. Seconds later we stood, drenched head to toe with black slime from the gyttja at the bottom of the ditch, in awe of the six-foot-diameter excavation created when the powder let loose.
Undeterred, we later fabricated a rocket out of 2-inch iron pipe with a cap screwed on one end, leaned it against a snowdrift, and set it aloft to a height of several hundred feet (at least), leaving a big black swatch on the snowbank.
The sound of ballistic discharges was a regular occurrence in my neighborhood, and we never did find the rocket. Yes, we were nuts.
I have a smallish glass stoppered bottle of mercury safely stored away. It ‘only’ weighs 4kg/9lb. Kids are absolutely fascinated by how heavy it feels, and it is a liquid too! They don’t get to play with the stuff in the raw, unlike when I was a child.
Thank goodness the set does not include any of that dangerous Dihydrogen Monoxide.
In making our gunpowder, producing enough powdered charcoal was the rate limiting step. We’d search quite diligently and competitively for well charred branches, grind away, crush, and filter until our nostrils became a dirty black color simply from inhaling near enough to the point of attack, which actually did start to get me worried about our “horrendous” work conditi0ns without the Unions available to save us from exploiting ourselves.
The gunpowder itself didn’t burn fast enough to merit any worry about direct ignition threats, but which also left us with having to be content with making piles in the shape of people’s names on the soft tar + fine gravel roads outside of their houses, lighting them up, and watching as the slow burn, with about 3-6 feet of sparkling vetical flames, snaked determinedly around its course to complete the project. I delighted in the thought that the intended
victimshonorees or their parents might be watching the proceedings from within their houses that night with some apprehension, only to find their names inscribed in the road so professionally the next morning!When I was doing A-level chemistry, in the late ’60’s, my home chemistry set was mostly supplied by the local pharmacist. It included the usual mineral acids (in 3 litre bottles), sodium and potassium metals, phosphorus, perchloric acid, ether, and even some fairly harmless things. These days the guy would have gone to jail. The PC brigade, if they read this, might even dig him up to lock him up! (see Oliver Cromwell)
I used to enjoy dropping sodium pellets into the local stream just above a bridge. The echo as they exploded was impressive. I once left a concoction in a coffee tin which exploded and took out the garage window, and the bang was heard quarter of a mile away. Fortunately, I wasn’t there at the time (nor anyone else), and, like you, still have all the digits.
Our chemistry teacher had been a WWII bomb disposal man, and he used to amuse us by blowing up parts of the playing fields.
No wonder that British kids don’t find science interesting nowadays.
I never made gunpowder, but I branched into the metal smelting industry when I was ten.
My brother and I heated lead to melting point on the kitchen stove, then took it outside to pour into a little mould. Then we cooled the result under the tap (faucet) and the little ingot dropped out.
Of course, we didnt know how much steam a tiny drop of residual water could make..until….
my brother was leaning over , doing the pouring when there was a BANG, and he got a face full of molten lead. He made a full recovery in a week, it took two weeks before my butt recovered after my father got home
EO
Drying out gun cotton in a gas oven in the 1950’s, was, on reflection, a somewhat foolhardy occupation………
At least we gave Darwin’s theory a chance, and in the still war damaged Portsmouth of that time, consequential damage would hardly have been noticeable!
“60 Fun Activities With No Chemicals”
This is just an apologist marketing statement saying your children will never be harmed while using the kit. Science without the risk of science, if you know what I mean. Post modern science defined.
The above comments bring back many childhood memories. I got my first chemistry set in about grade 3 and I suspect that many of the chemicals that were part of the average childhood chemistry set then would be very difficult to get nowadays. It didn’t take long before my interests turned to explosives and rockets and I was soon banned from making gunpowder inside the house. All it took was a trip to the pharmacy to pick up the KNO3 and S and the primary difficulty was getting the charcoal crushed fine enough. My gunpowder rockets were epic failures but what did work well was to take an empty metal pen refill and carefully stuff it full of matchheads. Applying a flame to the open end of the pen refill resulted in gratifying flight and the first attempt embedded itself in the wooden exterior wall of my parents house. Firecrackers were easily available when I was a child and, by slightly enlarging the hole the fuse went into, one could produce rockets.
I found sodium perchlorate to be too touchy to use in home made explosives and a few unanticipated but spectacular explosions with perchlorate based mixtures convinced me to get away from explosives. It was fortunate that by this time I’d developed an interest in biochemistry and organic chemistry which lasted until the end of undergrad university. The one area I’d like to explore again if I find the time are oscillating chemical reactions now that I have the equipment to monitor them in far more detail than a film camera and stopwatch that I used the first time that I got the Belousov-Zhabotinski reaction working.
The chemophobia of current society is depriving kids of valuable experiences and safety Nazi’s have far too strong a role in society now. The last thing any kid would want to do is to grow a plant. Plant growth, in the temporal perception of a child, takes forever and it wasn’t until I was in my 50’s that I had the patience for gardening. Kids like things that happen fast; perhaps that’s the reason for the universal fascination with explosives for all of us who grew up in an era when it was considered to be a normal childhood pastime to blow things up.
Flash powder and Potassium Permanganate also makes a good bang.
Oh! Sorry this could be construed as help for terrorists, though they seem to be able to get hold of Semtex without any bother.
And I have just realized–humans are composed of CHEMICALS !!!
My, what a bang happy bunch of little pyromaniacs we make. My parents are also of that exclusive club whose members had to explain to neighbours why their son has no eyebrows all of a sudden.
The things you could do with burning magnesium and a few chemicals…*sigh*
I too discovered that homemade exploding rockets are far easier to make than homemade rockets……..and weather balloons filled with homemade hydrogen make tremendous fireballs in the night sky.
Ahhh, memories.
I remember having great fun making hydrogen in a jam jar – a bit of washing soda and some aluminium foil squares in water IIRC. Puting foil secured with a rubber band over the top of the jar then allowed you to light it when you poked a hole in the top. There was a delightful ‘pop’ blowing the foil and band a few feet in the air.
My “kids” are 23, 21 and 15. I bought them chemistry sets as presents wnen they were a lot younger and helped them with the experiments and tried to encourage them to love science as I do. None of them has any scientific inclinations whatsoever. Why? Because once they had put on the polythene apron, protective gloves and goggles, they were bored rigid by the mind-numbing mediocre experiments and chemicals in the box.
When I was a kid I used to make rockets and explosives from sodium chlorate weedkiller and sugar (Na ClO3 is now banned by the EU). I made tracer pellets for my air rifle by scraping off the red bit at the top of a match and putting it in the pellet. The compressed air in the gun would ignite it. Cannot do that now because all matches are safety matches. I bought chemicals by mail order, I cannot do that now because the postman might be in danger. I cannot buy chemicals locally because they have been banned from local shops. We cannot buy banger fireworks they have been banned as well. I never hurt myself or anyone else with these activities
What a boring, sterile, risk averse, thrill less world we live in.
I love Fridays.
But there is possibly a serious connection here. Is it possible that the younger generation is so gullible about climate and health scary stories because they have been prevented from doing experiments as children? Have we made our children safer and more ignorant in the process?
Sometimes I am nostalgic about the 1950s.
You missed the “Science Tricks” : must be a post-normal science kit.
My career started in a room of my own that I was permitted to fit out for experiments. It was highly educational, but I would probably be locked up now. I used to do big bang experiments with the girl next door. My raw material was from the local pharmacist, mostly harmless lubricants and rubber compounds, which he sold with a strange look to a 1o year old. Ignition could be unpredictable and sometimes one could lose a digit for a while.
Who are these weird people who would emasculate little boys and ditto (insert correct term) little girls? The best memories of childhood are often those when you knew absolutely that you were doing what you had been told not to do.
Yes, I did chemistry also. Like one of the above bloggers, I tried drying gun cotton, not in a gas oven, but over a Bunsen. It had dried by next day, when my brother lit the Bunsen for another use. My cousin made his 15 minutes of Warhol with a live artillery shell about 2’6” long at midnight on Guy Fawkes night, 5th November, 1957. (Psychoanalysts can here insert a reference to ‘phallus’ shape). He then took time off from discovering the joys of sex until he could again hear that ‘No means no’, but made up lost ground later.
Chemophobic education in childhood? Probably breaches the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Brings back the old story of “Stone Soup”
A chemistry set with which you could make 2 Dimensional bubbles would be far more interesting.
The intent is pretty clear. You will get sued if you provide the materials for anything useful or interesting. Much less chance of lawsuits when you provide only “literature”.
Though I hate to admit it, this may actually be a good thing. If you’re inclined toward chemistry, you’ll probably learn more and remember more when you use materials you already know. The experiments in the old “complete” chemistry sets weren’t all that interesting to me, because they didn’t seem especially relevant. Take this set of mysterious letters and mix in this other set of mysterious letters, and the litmus turns blue. Okay, so what?
Can’t believe all you wusses saying ‘I’d probably have got arrested for that today’ – you just weren’t trying hard enough. Many years ago, a chap I knew actually did manage to get himself arrested despite the more lenient attitudes at the time. While quite a few kids experiment with miniature pipe bombs on railway lines, and so-on, not many decide to do it in a major station at rush hour.
Seems like all the males here enjoyed big explosions. I too enjoyed my chemistry set, but I remember mostly things like making whatever was in the test tube change colors when I added a little of this or a little of that. This little set doesn’t sound like much fun, and certainly not worth the money, especially if all the chemicals are common household items and not included anyway.
On the more serious side, I grew up on military posts where there were impact areas full of unexploded ordinance, some of them fairly near the main post. Boys (always just boys) would go out to these areas, sometimes inadvertently (and a dud would blow them sky high) or on purpose, to get duds which they would bring home to extract the gunpowder. There is a lot more gunpowder in a mortar shell. One kid was killed and another lost his hands in these little adventures. Those areas are a lot harder to get to now.
I remember the chemistry lab at my posh girl’s school in the 60s. A few of us discovered we could mix nitric acid and iron filings together and stink the whole school out. It was worth the detentions!
Speaking of chemicals, this article could put some people off eating strawberries. http://tribalscientist.wordpress.com/2010/10/18/how-to-make-a-strawberry/
Doing chemistry without chemicals? Perhaps it is another one of those “nature tricks”.
61, you can toast ants with the magnifying glass provided!
The reason why there are no chemicals in the box is because the new American dream is to make as much as you can while working as little as you can. In the latest example, as soon it was revealed the iPhone tracks you, a lawsuit was started. People are sue happy. Ever read your car’s manual? Every other page is “don’t do this while driving” or something similar. It has to be that way because some greedy person will purposefully ignore common sense, sue the car company because they didn’t tell me it was unsafe to read the manual while driving, and win lots of money.
And so companies must protect themselves from litigation. People want to be rich because far too many believe the lie that “money = happiness”. It isn’t the nanny state in this instance. It is greed.