{"id":2784,"date":"2012-12-27T14:07:25","date_gmt":"2012-12-27T17:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/?p=2784"},"modified":"2012-12-27T14:14:43","modified_gmt":"2012-12-27T17:14:43","slug":"chemistry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/2012\/12\/27\/chemistry\/","title":{"rendered":"Chemistry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lamentations about the disappearance of classical “science kits” appear on the media every few years. Recently, the New York Times<\/a>, Boing Boing<\/a> and others<\/a> wrote about it.<\/p>\n

A chemistry kit from Kosmos (a German company that still makes them) was one of several my parents gave me, and I used it intensively for several years. Here’s a picture of the kit itself:<\/p>\n

\"kosmos1\"<\/a>and here’s a list of the contents (in German):<\/p>\n

\"kosmos2\"<\/a>(both pictures are courtesy of Hugo Rune<\/a>). Several compounds, notably sulfuric acid, nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, were not sold with the kit – for safety reasons – and my father obtained them at his company. I soon learned that there were a few chemical supply houses in town, where I could buy extra test tubes, glass and rubber tubing, and replacement chemicals.<\/p>\n

As far as “safety reasons” go, I believe that almost none of those chemicals would be allowed today. To quote one manufacturer of modern kits (from the New York Times piece):<\/p>\n

Basically, you have to be able to eat everything in the science kit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I suppose that for today’s kids, with their nanosecond attention spans, atrophied self-preservation instincts and parents who sue anybody at the drop of a hat, these precautions are necessary. For myself, I was used to seeing my father handle dangerous tools and substances in his workshop, and although I had a few scares with exploding reagents, nothing serious happened. For a few years – until I discovered that there were actual computers available outside of science-fiction books – I even thought I would pursue chemistry as a career.<\/p>\n

Even so, this kit was extremely important and life-changing for me. At the time, my father still smoked occasionally – this was in the early 1960s. My kit included a simple glass aspirator pump<\/a> (it’s not on the above parts list, for some reason), and I noticed that one of the glass tubes had a flared end that was the exact fit for a cigarette. I hooked the pump up to most of my glass tubes and soon had a primitive cigarette-smoking machine. The pump vacuum was strong enough that a lighted cigarette was smoked down to a nub in less than a minute! But the most impressive result was that the tubes were completely clogged with a black, foul-smelling, viscous substance.<\/p>\n

Cleaning the tar out of my precious tubes made me strongly resolve to never start smoking in any form, and I think that my father stopped smoking very soon after seeing the results of that experiment. Maybe some educator should consider selling such smoking machine kits; the episode was certainly decisive for me.<\/p>\n

I also fondly recall several other science\/engineering kits from my childhood. My chemistry kit, unfortunately, no longer exists, but I still have the\u00a0M\u00e4rklin Metallbaukasten<\/a>\u00a0I got at the age of 3 (and even use it now and then)! I also had a Lectron Elektronik<\/a> kit, several other electronic kits from Brazilian companies (Heathkit<\/a>s were, unfortunately, unavailable), and uncountable puzzles and educational games. We also subscribed to several magazines about such subjects.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, I’m extremely grateful to my parents in making these and other materials available to me under difficult circumstances.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> just found a scholarly paper by Daniel Wolf<\/a> about science kits (in German); very interesting.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lamentations about the disappearance of classical “science kits” appear on the media every few years. Recently, the New York Times, Boing Boing and others wrote about it. A chemistry kit from Kosmos (a German company that still makes them) was one of several my parents gave me, and I used it intensively for several years. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,36],"class_list":["post-2784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sci","tag-education","tag-history"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Rainer Brockerhoff","author_link":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/author\/rbrockerhoff\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1q3Zc-IU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}