
Whatever happened to kids' chemistry sets? - pmiller2
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19050342
======
noonespecial
I can't help but wonder if I'll wax nostalgic one day about the unfettered
access I had to general purpose computers that I could make do almost anything
as the "think of the children" types of that day tut-tut about how madly
dangerous it all was.

~~~
arethuza
That is one of the themes in Vinge's _Rainbows End_ :
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End>

It describes a near future where it is a legal requirement that all computing
devices conform to a "Secure Hardware Environment" (SHE) standard.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
That sounds eerily similar to the UEFI Secure Boot system.

------
samstave
Being Grounded?

I almost burnt down my house - burnt off my arm hair and eye brows, nearly
caused a forest fire in tahoe, blew up numerous model craft from ships to
russian migs and sikorski copters...

We built explosives from gallons of hairspray from my best friends mom's
salons, to pipe bombs we used to blow up forest stumps, canons made from test
tubes and shotgun shells... as well as the solid rocket fuel from estes
engines to fill model craft with for spectacular explosions.

We found our fuse from avalanche fuse whilst on ski team at Squaw and Alpine
in Tahoe...

The 80s were awesome. The NSA will love this post.

~~~
yafujifide
Reminds me of the time I used hair spray and a lighter as a blow torch and
nearly burned down the woods in my backyard. Thanks for the nostalgia.

~~~
waterlesscloud
All I learned was that if you soaked snow with enough hairspray you could burn
it.

And that cologne could burn on your hand without hurting you.*

*Don't try this at home.

~~~
nitrogen
Rumor has it that hand sanitizer on a wet hand has similar properties, at
least for short times.

~~~
adavies42
ethanol burns relatively cool (as do (some of?) the other alcohols). the
problem is that it often burns above the ignition point of its carrier
substance, which itself burns much hotter. e.g. calcium acetate/isopropyl
alcohol gel (lab sterno) is perfectly safe to burn in your hand, but only
until the alcohol runs out--it will light the calcium acetate, which is not
remotely safe to burn in your hand.

hand sanitizer is usually an alcohol in water and a thickener (glycerin,
etc.). i'd worry a bit about the same effect. (not that i actually know what
the ignition and flame temps of glycerin are....)

------
DigitalSea
I'm only 24, but I remember when I was 12 having a chemistry set that had some
pretty crazy chemicals in it. There wasn't anything crazy like uranium or
other chemicals that could create amphetamines, but I do recall blindly mixing
ingredients in a test tube, blowing the top and bottom of it out and covering
a portion of the roof in the mixture which then proceeded to burn through the
paint and etch the wood. I remember my dad painted like 5 coats of paint over
the top and it kept showing through, those were the days.

Don't get me started on the excitement of burning magnesium ribbon, my
kerosene powered Bunsen burner that I almost burned down the wooden front-deck
with when I accidentally knocked it over, experimenting with beakers and
filter paper... I feel sorry for kids these days who won't ever get to
experience the fun in mixing semi-dangerous chemicals together in a test tube
or beaker, I believe my chemistry set is what made me become the programmer I
am today.

My chemistry set kept me out of trouble as a teenager because blowing things
up, playing with chemicals and fire wasn't new to me, I was desensitised to it
all when I was young and the thought of blowing up a car battery or soda bulb
paled in comparison to magnesium ribbon or an explosive chemical cocktail
mixture courtesy of my chemistry set.

------
Zenst
Sadly as stated in the article alot of the chemicals your dads got to play
with are no longer available at a consumer level and in that be it most
protect the children approach was not even the main reason were in this state.

It is lamentable and whilst kids in the 60's could build bombs and other fun
kids stuff of the time. Well if they did half of what kids back then did they
would be labeled terrorists and packaged up as one, which is in many ways very
very sad.

I must say the aspect of offering perfume type chemistry sets is a novel
approach and I appaud that level of thinking. But for young boys who wish to
see things go bang it is sadly not of much use.

Now maybe we could oneday get a digital chemistry set were you can relive all
the old wonderful explosions and resctions. It's not like we don't know how
every combination fo chemical in a 60's chemistry set will react in every
permutation and it is also not like we don't have the processing power to do
some of the cleverness in a way that is educational and appealing.

Still at least kids can buy gun-caps still and from those you can make bolt-
bombs, bangers (with celotape and electic bang fuses) and also great fun added
to the end of a dart with cotton wall around the shaft. So in many ways kids
can still have ther bang fun and snappies are still available and great fun in
pea-shooters.

But chemisty fun is one they just can't get until at school and then it's
overly controlled with most being demostrations without the level of
intereaction some need.

Heck if you had a place were us adults could go and play chemistry set like
our old days - even if it is in a room were no chemicals can leave, well i'd
know alot would be up for that.

But it is a balance between saftly and education and in many ways that balance
is overly biased deeming everybody by default to be a mad drig producing, WMD
making terrorist and that in itself is just sad.

~~~
slurgfest
Terrorism is probably not nearly as important in this as the march of legal
liability. If chemistry sets ever included all the stuff required for making a
serious explosive, it has been decades since then.

If you started a chain of chemical hackerspaces for adults (the neat idea you
describe) and did not take strict measures to control your liability then
sooner or later you could be sure of a suit from someone who injured himself.

And the days have long passed when you could sell toys like "bag o'glass" to
kids without facing epic liability.

~~~
pmiller2
Speaking of glass, in Texas, you need a permit to own laboratory glassware.
See <http://www.crscientific.com/texas-glassware.html> .

~~~
Zenst
WOW , thank you for highlighting that. Guess home brewers loved that law.

Another case of everybody assumed to be some major drug lord making drugs
again :(.

------
JonnieCache
In the 60s, kids used to make bombs etc. In the 90s, we used to scan huge IP
ranges on the net looking for open netbios ports. I'm sure in the future, kids
will find their own stupid and dangerous stuff to amuse themselves with.

~~~
specto
Ah the memories.

------
VLM
Having done several undergrad chem classes, I'm impressed how much of the
article was outright wrong on a chemistry basis, along with lots of the HN
comments. Mostly names wrong, but some basic concepts were messed up like you
don't make a fertilizer bomb out of potassium nitrate. Its like saying you
could make a ipod out of a watch, because both use circuit boards and silicon
based chips.

I'm almost 100% certain the article was not run past a chemist before
publishing. Note that a chemistry teacher is an ed degree who was hired to
teach, chemistry knowledge is a nice to have, but quite optional.

Also funny watching the article dance around the real reason, nobody on the
planet works harder than teenagers trying to be cool, and its not cool to be
smart, chem sets are for smart kids, therefore chem sets are not popular as a
gift, compared, perhaps, to a football. They were never popular anyway,
although they did "bubble" for a decade or so in the 50s. In a similar way I
expect in 60 years we'll be treated to journalists writing "whatever happened
to McMansions/SUVs" and they'll somehow get it entirely wrong.

~~~
nickpinkston
I'm not sure - I was used KNO3 and sugar to make rocket fuel when I was
younger, it makes smoke bombs if too much sugar, but I figured fine KNO3 at
the right concentration with fuel oil would create an explosive. You still
need a primary explosive and detonator though. Is KNO3 + Fuel Oil different
than the usual NH4NO3 "AN-FO" bombs?

------
rdtsc
> Convincing children and parents that science is safe is a priority for
> health and safety executive chairwoman Judith Hackitt.

What bullshit.

Lord forbid the precious little snowflakes burn their finger on the bunsen
burner or make a stink bomb. However there are no problems signing them up for
contact sports so they go around with concussions, broken limbs and torn
ligaments.

~~~
nirvana
There's an important difference between these two activities. One trains
creative thinking, critical thinking, and respect for science, the other
teaches teamwork, following orders and respect for authority.

------
Stratoscope
A few years ago I bought my daughter the "Sciencewiz Chemistry Experiments
Kit". We got it home and opened it and found the chemicals inside... sand and
baking soda!

You can't make this stuff up:

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1886978042>

------
readme
The reason I write software, is that I had access to a computer and I was able
to try it myself, and have a seemingly infinite amount of time (my teen years)
to learn and experiment.

Computers, are relatively safe, so no one has cracked down on them, yet.
Although we see threats all the time with internet censorship attempts, and
the like.

It's too bad the curiosity of our youth is being stifled over paranoid safety
concerns. It's not making people safer. It's causing them to grow up with no
sense of personal responsibility because they have never been exposed to real
danger.

------
ginko
How about creating a chemistry kit with all the necessary instruments and
experimentation guides but without any chemicals?

Just add a guide on how to get the necessary chemicals as an adult.

This allows chemistry set manufacturers to stay out of legal trouble and
allows parents to decide for themselves what kind of experiments they allow.

Edit: TBH, it should be possible to make a whole DIY chemistry kit guide.
Getting the instruments to do microscale chemistry[1] is incredibly cheap.
Some glass rods, a few microscale testtubes + holders, some filters, a small
glass funnel, a gas burner and maybe a few other things should be enough to do
quite a lot of experiments.

[1]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microscale_chemistry>

~~~
justincormack
It is getting harder to buy chemicals. Photographic suppliers have some but
more things are restricted or not allowed to be posted.

------
pnathan
Well, the UK has gone mad about safety, and the US is following them.
Chemistry is not _safe_ , no matter how you want it to be. You can generally
avoid injury with proper equipment & training, however.

Anyway, this set seems to be relatively complete.
<http://chemistrysetstore.com/chem-c3000-chemistry-set>

------
sgt101
ok, not chemistry, and maybe not quite for kids but <http://diybio.org/> shows
that there is something really interesting happening where for a few $100 you
can do some amazing physical science.

~~~
Zenst
Interesting and something i'll look into more - thank you.

------
mmcnickle
Practical experiments at school have gone through a similar sanitisation. At
the same time contact sports are encouraged, though are statistically more
dangerous.

------
Turing_Machine
O'Reilly/Make author Robert Bruce Thompson has been selling a line of science
kits. The chemistry kit is a little closer to an old-school chemistry set than
the dumbed-down "chemistry sets" of today (though still not quite the same;
it's designed for formal academic instruction rather than just fooling
around). Unfortunately he can't send them anywhere other than the U.S. and
Canada.

<http://www.thehomescientist.com/kits/CK01/ck01-main.html>

~~~
bcl
He also has a pretty good blog - <http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/>

------
DanBC
In the UK a child died after drinking a beaker of (I think, my memory is hazy)
copper sulphate.

This very rare but avoidable death possibly led to people thinking "chemistry
sets are dangerous" and not buying them. Or maybe as makers made sets safer
people felt that the sets were not worth the money - not exciting enough.

The toy industry is pretty brutal too. It is a multi billion dollar business,
with a limited number of companies in the sector.

The BBC article mentions a radioactive toy. With careful websearching you can
find safe versions of similar items. Here's one, a spinthariscope:

([http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath...](http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=2_12))

EDIT: I'm unable to find the news report of the child dying. Here's a result
from Google Books:

([http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xXVEKN79diAC&pg=PA371...](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xXVEKN79diAC&pg=PA371&lpg=PA371&dq=%22copper+sulphate%22+chemistry+set+death&source=bl&ots=IQV_mi4ro8&sig=bTMxZDLyU_ktnBo3OT8we-4Xkpg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=LtEYUPKRNLSX0QXx9oHgAg&ved=0CJ4CEOgBMAQ#v=onepage&q=%22copper%20sulphate%22%20chemistry%20set%20death&f=false))

Here's another result about Cobalt Chloride:

([http://sci.tech-
archive.net/Archive/sci.chem/2006-07/msg0000...](http://sci.tech-
archive.net/Archive/sci.chem/2006-07/msg00003.html))

~~~
smsm42
I don't think the problem was people not buying them. I think the problem was
a small bunch of lawsuit-happy parents and probably some trigger-happy
regulators that always prefer to forbid first and ask questions never.

It is cool when the kid can experiment with real chemicals, but if one stupid
one out of thousands sets the house on fire or drinks something that says "DO
NOT DRINK!" and the parents sue and/or whine to regulators - it's not worth it
for the maker anymore. And in the age when common sense is not considered
common anymore and everything even remotely dangerous, even if the danger is
purely theoretical, comes with 9000 warnings, what do you expect?

------
wamatt
This happened...

<http://www.thejayfk.com/?p=621>

~~~
ramses
That is ... beyond wrong :-(

------
ramses
Yup ... I still remember going almost blind by throwing Mg in H2O ... and
coming back for more, both experimentally an theoretically.

Contemporary parents must learn that it is good for kids to get cuts, bruises,
broken bones, infections ... blinding flashes of Mg in H2O ... otherwise you
didn't have a childhood ... otherwise you may not become a well-adjusted and
curious adult.

~~~
pmiller2
Don't you mean burning Mg? It does react with water at room temperature, but
very slowly (unless it's powdered).

~~~
einhverfr
Now my most spectacular and explosive mishaps involved Mg, vinegar, and fire.
Now, there is some fun to be had.

Vinegar + Mg + dish soap makes a foam that can explode under certain
circumstances, That;s not dangerous, but it can make an amusing mess.

You can also make torches whose flames are invisible in daylight or cause
small explosions of you know what you are doing.

------
bstx
KOSMOS experimental sets are still somewhat popular in Germany.

[http://www.kosmos-
shop.de/Experimentierkasten-640132/Kosmos-...](http://www.kosmos-
shop.de/Experimentierkasten-640132/Kosmos-Chemielabor-C-3000/kosmos_5698/)

I only had the electronic sets as a kid, so I don't know how much the chemical
ones have been dumbed down since.

------
bootload
"... Yes they are safe. Are there some hazards associated with them? Yes, but
of a very minor nature. The whole idea of them is you learn from handling real
materials, ..."

Hmm I remember doing that & learning about the burn properties of sulphur. I
had a lab under the house. My dads vice held an old bent spoon where I could
mix things up and burn them. It was the first time I found a noxious gas
burning sulphur, looking at the small blue flame. Taking a small breath of the
stuff gave me a bit of a fright as the gas (SO2 or sulphur dioxide) literally
sucked my breath away. I just discovered my first oxy-philic reaction :)
(previous chemistry set Qs:
[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=bootload+ch...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=bootload+chemistry+sets))

------
nicholassmith
I think I must have been on the edge of the chemistry set rule. One of my
uncles bought me one for Christmas, much to the consternation of my slightly
overprotective mother, however she let me play with the kit, got me the
necessary fuel for the bunsen burner and so on. Didn't blow anything up, had
much fun with the magnesium ribbon, all very jolly good fun. That must have
been about mid-90s, didn't see many sets after then.

However I do feel sorry for kids who have science lessons without a practical,
I had two very excellent chemistry teachers who were very happy to get kids
involved in chemistry demonstrations (without incident), and an excellent
biology teacher who had nothing but trust with arming a bunch of 15 year olds
with scalpels.

------
dminor
When I was in middle school I took a class at OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science
and Industry) called "explosive chemistry". We made black powder, sparklers,
bombs, blew up water-filled pop cans with sodium, and all sorts of other
things that would never be allowed today.

It was great fun.

~~~
adavies42
i went to academic summer camps basically from sixth grade on (Duke TIP-
affiliated stuff), and one year i took chemistry class. one of the three weeks
was "uncontrolled oxidation" week. lots of fun. :) the biggest takeaway was
that potassium perchlorate plus almost anything equals cool. i think my
favorite was equal parts potassium perchlorate and sugar in a half-coke can.
take outside and add a couple drops of sulfuric acid--ten-foot cone of flame.

for reference this would be, hmm, i think 1995? somewhere between 94 and 97,
anyway.

------
wisty
> "Most of them are what you could refer to as kitchen chemistry," says Cook.
> "Using things you can find in your kitchen - baking soda or vinegar."

Cost savings, a moral high-ground, and buyers who won't use the product
themselves. It's an unholy trinity.

------
tzs
When I was a kid, several of us in my neighborhood had vials of mercury that
we enjoyed playing with. We didn't do any chemistry experiments with it,
though--we just enjoyed watching solid metal objects float on it, and taking
it out and feeling how weird it felt rolling around in our hands.

This was in the late '60s and early '70s. I don't remember where we got it,
but we didn't keep it secret, and no adults (parents, teachers) freaked out if
they saw us with it.

I wonder what would happen nowadays if a kid brought some mercury to school to
play with?

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Probably old thermostats. Most of them used mercury switches. Also
thermometers have a a tiny amount of the stuff.

------
mwexler
I'd add: whatever happened to microscopes? I loved getting one of those and a
box of slides: bugs, plants, cells, all kinds of cross sections... And what
happened to the 160 in one electronics kits from Radio Shack, ala
<http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1987/h104.html>? (Actually, those last
evolved into the rather clever SnapCircuits which are pretty fun, sold in
Radio Shack and other fine stores).

------
gautamc
I recently discovered an old chemistry book that is supposedly banned from
publication, but since it's not under any copyright anymore we can download it
with breaking any rules : [http://openmaterials.org/2010/03/18/banned-the-
golden-book-o...](http://openmaterials.org/2010/03/18/banned-the-golden-book-
of-chemistry-experiments/) \-- I am finding it really cool to read and learn
from.

------
smsm42
Here's a fresh example:
<http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml12/12234.html>

Now buckyballs are mortal hazard and have to be banned. They are marked 13+,
but who cares - it's obvious that it's fun, thus has to be banned by federal
government.

------
erre
In that same vein, I like Gever Tulley's "5 dangerous things you should let
your kids do" TED Talk:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids.html)

Kids should _definitely_ be allowed to play with fire.

------
Create
There 'is no demand' for it.

[http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/07/epic-fraud-how-to-
suc...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/07/epic-fraud-how-to-succeed-in-
science-without-doing-any/)

------
tlrobinson
The internet? I remember going over to a friend's house in middle school, and
him showing me how to make a small bomb using stuff from the chemistry set
using instructions he found online...

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Funny thing about that is that the internet may have saved me in a similar
way. I mentioned online that I wanted experiment with anodizing aluminum and I
was warned that the household chemicals I was going to use -- sulphuric acid
from an old car battery and potassium permanganate (for a nice purple color)
for my water supply's iron filter - can form a pressure-sensitive explosive.

I keep forgetting to try it...

------
mibbitier
European legislation interference health and safety BS happened.

------
nirvana
I think its sad that our society has become so divorced from reality that
Uranium- a naturally occurring element- is considered a "crazy" thing for kids
to have. It takes huge amounts of uranium and processing and a lot of
technology to make a bomb, most of the difficulty has nothing to do with the
uranium.

You can get uranium simply by buying old fiestaware. The paint they used in
certain colors used uranium as part of the pigment.

If you have a geiger counter you can make noise with it. (not that I think
there's much useful to do with uranium in a chemistry set, but then I was
always poor at chemistry.)

It is just a real shame that "uranium" has become a scary word.

~~~
eavc
You make a good point, but it's disingenuous to equate 'naturally occurring'
with safe for kids to have.

Mercury is a naturally occurring element.

