I was applying some bathroom sealant to my daughter's bath the other day. The small of ammonia was an immediate blast from the past. It took me straight back to my chemistry set when I was a kid!
I remember it so well, a wooden rack of glass test tubes, litmus paper, tweezers, glass flasks and how can I ever forget the bottles of chemicals like iron filings and the green [or blue?] copper sulphate!
I think my set was by Merit here in the UK and it will have been around 1970 maybe. It all come in a huge flat box. Happy days and great reactions! ha ha!
Did you have a chemistry set readers?
I did have a chemistry set, but I never really knew what to do with it! It wasn't exactly little green army men or Marx playsets. If I'm not mistaken, the thing stayed around for only a few months before tossing the junk out.
ReplyDeleteHad two of those Merit chemistry sets (one acquired from school friend) and had my "lab" set up in the plat corner of the living room for a while. Did lots of experiments from the manual (remember putting a nail in a copper oxide solution making it look rusty) and trying a few random things of my own. And then heating up a flask with a stopper on it made the thing shoot the stopper with force, leaving a large brown stain on the ceiling and that was largely that!
ReplyDeleteBest -- Paul
oops - "play corner" not "plat corner"
ReplyDelete-- Paul
I had one too. Rubbish! I wanted to blow things up or set things on fire with the chemicals but health and safety wouldn't allow toys made like that :)
ReplyDeleteI had two chemistry sets as a kid, a small Thomas Salter one and then a big Merit one for Christmas circa 1972.
ReplyDeleteI didn't do many of the experiments in the booklets but just kind of played mixing up the chemicals and making them bubble away in the little flasks over the spirit burner.
Never got tired of throwing Iron Filings in the flame either.
I did make some crystals though (I think that was with the Copper Sulphate) and a "Chemical Garden" in a jar which I thought was pretty cool at the time.
I was never really in to it though and I can remember mum getting fed up with the stains in the kitchen sink from me washing out the test tubes and other stuff.
Fun days though.
Remember being rather underwhelmed by my chemistry set too. One of those things you wanted, then not sure what to do with it when you had one!
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