{"id":2954,"date":"2008-07-28T10:30:05","date_gmt":"2008-07-28T04:37:36","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2013-04-30T15:07:46","modified_gmt":"2013-04-30T22:07:46","slug":"best-home-chemi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/best-home-chemi\/","title":{"rendered":"Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments"},"content":{"rendered":"

The very best chemistry experiment book for kids is the legendary and long-out-of-print book, the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments<\/em>. Published in 1960 during the heyday of home chemistry, it was meant to accompany the millions of chemistry kits that were sold each year to typical American kids. You got real experiments with real chemicals. Not like the so-called chemistry sets today which boldly (and insanely) advertise they contain “No Chemicals!”<\/p>\n

Among many other things, the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments<\/em> told you how to make chlorine gas from bathroom supplies, hydrogen from flashlight battery parts, and rayon from scrap paper, etc. You can see why it was not reprinted in the decades following because of concerns about safety. I used my copy, which is now worth $200 on eBay, to do all the experiments in the book when I was 12, and went on to build a chem lab in my basement. As many kids did.<\/p>\n

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Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, 1960.<\/em><\/p>\n

You can get a decent free PDF version of the Golden Book on BitTrorrent. Even better, there’s a new great book for home-made experiments, updated for today: the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments<\/em> from the tech publisher O’Reilly. The Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments<\/em> is aimed at home schoolers, high school students, and lifelong-learning adults. It is aptly subtitled “All lab, no lecture”<\/p>\n

The Golden Book<\/em> encouraged playing around with molecules, with no agenda beyond demonstrating the power, principles, and diversity of chemical reactions. The Illustrated Guide<\/em> on the other hand is a basement laboratory manual meant to teach you the basic working principles of chemistry. How to mix a molar solution. How to titrate. How to do quantitative sleuthing. It claims that if you go through all the chapters you’ll be prepared to pass the college-level AP Chem Lab test. You would also be able to work in most laboratories. And of course, you would probably be able to follow most chemistry recipes from the internet, or at least to figure out what you need to make something chemistry-wise.<\/p>\n

At the very least, this book should help cure any hysteria you — or your kids — might have about CHEMICALS. Sure, they can be dangerous, like your car. But we are surrounded by chemicals, and the only way to understand their real risks is to mess around with them.<\/p>\n

Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments<\/em> is a fantastic teacher for chemical literacy. It will show you or your kids how to work with chemicals, and why they are fun. Some of the experiments are visually entertaining. Others are scientifically important. It’s got wise advice about the few bits of equipment you’ll need for your lab. The Illustrated Guide<\/em> very handily provides substitutions for ingredients whenever possible, so you can work around harder to acquire or expensive chemicals and gear. And it very conscientiously gives proper disposal instructions for substances at the end (the first I’ve ever seen in a chem book). The author is thrifty, using no more stuff then necessary, and always suggesting ways to purchase the minimum equipment.<\/p>\n

Other than the hidden Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments<\/em>, there are simply no other decent books for the beginner chemical experimenter. The ones you find in libraries are simply useless trash. The stuff on the internet is haphazard and inconsistent. Follow the instructions here in the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments<\/em> and you’ll be on your way to chemical literacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Best home chemistry lab book<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2954"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11870,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954\/revisions\/11870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}