Skip to main content

A lament for the chemistry set

According to some research results which I obtained via the highly dubious route that someone mentioned them on Twitter - i.e. I have no idea whether this is true or not - over a recent period in some country or other (see, it's detailed research), 0 children were injured by chemistry sets while 600 were injured by Wendy houses.

You might be inclined to deduce that Wendy houses are much more dangerous than chemistry sets, but I think it's more likely that no one gets given chemistry sets any more. I can't remember when I last saw one in the shops. And that's sad.

Chemistry sets were wonderful. You could make interesting colours, smells - if you were lucky, minor explosions. And I suppose that's the problem. In our elf and safety conscious world, chemistry sets were watered down so much that in the end they just weren't worth having. I suspect they took out all the good bits and left you with little more than bicarbonate and vinegar.

Now even in my day, chemistry sets did not contain the materials to get up to the adventures I used to have in my evil basement chemistry lab. I was the master of producing nitrogen tri-iodide, the interesting black stuff that when dry explodes when you touch it. I revelled in the spontaneous combustion of potassium permanganate and glycerine (tip - it works best if you warm the glycerine up a bit). Yet even so, they were fun.

The conclusion? Should we be campaigning for there to be more accidents with chemistry sets? Quite probably. We might get more scientists that way.

You'll be pleased to know that some chemistry sets do still exist - the one above is here at Amazon.co.uk.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Clare Dudman16 December 2009 at 09:48

    Agreed! When I was teaching the subject 'Elf and Safety' meant you could do hardly anything and there were classes I think would have loved it. Someone pointed out to me at the time that if a pupil were slightly injured (e.g. finger burn) in a chemistry lesson the parents would be up in arms - but a broken leg in a game of rugby would hardly raise an eyebrow. Not sure that's true these days, but certainly was then.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sue Guiney16 December 2009 at 09:52

    Hear! Hear! I loved my chemistry set...but even more, I loved my microscope. Don't tell me they don't make kids' first microscopes anymore, either :-(

    ReplyDelete
  3. cromercrox16 December 2009 at 10:50

    What have you lot got against elves?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Brian Clegg16 December 2009 at 11:44

    It's not all elves, Henry, just the jobsworth ones.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...
118 comments
Read more

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...
25 comments
Read more