Illustrated Guide To Home Chemistry Experiments

ptorrone writes "The sad fact is chemistry and chemistry sets have been on the decline for the last couple decades. All is not lost, however. We (MAKE magazine) have a new book called The Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. Learn how to smelt copper, purify alcohol, synthesize rayon, test for drugs and poisons, and much more. In this video, Bob the chemist shows how to get around a pesky DEA regulation so you can make your own iodine. GeekDad also reviewed the book."

Safety goggles!

[nbauman]

Be sure to wear your safety goggles. I know!
Although I must say that the eye heals suprisingly well after a minor injury. http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/358/21/2265 [nejm.org] (Hyphema is blood in the eye.)

Re:Excellent idea

[triffid_98]

Or you could just walk over to your OSH garden center and buy a box of that stuff, as long as you don't need 100% purity that stuff is easy to get (used to improve soil acidity in alkaline soils).

Sulphur is the easiest element to collect. Just walk along train tracks and look for the yellow pebbles that fall through the sulphur cars. I was able to collect maybe 10 grams in about 5 mins.

Re:Just remember to use cash.

[smellsofbikes]

At least in the area I live, most chemistry/science supply places have gone to cash-only sales because they are required to track and report ID's on check and credit card sales but not on cash sales. Interesting unintended side-effect.

Re:Excellent idea

[snowraver1]

Actually Air is not nitrogen, it just contains nitrogen. It's like saying Coke is water.

Air has Oxygen, water vapor, evil CO2, methane, helium, hydrogen, nitrogen oxides, dust & smoke, and FSM knows what else in it.

I stand by my statement that sulpher is the easiest element to collect.

Geez- talk about getting history wrong

[edremy]

The science of gunpowder was well documented in there, but the history is dead wrong. Schwartz and Bacon were in no way the creators of gunpowder- the Chinese developed it centuries before, and there is ample historical documentation for the development of various strains, uses in warfare, etc. China is not mentioned *anywhere* in the article.

I've heard a lot of people talk about how great the 1911 version of EB is- based on this article, I would not trust it for anything remotely historical that involves something outside of Europe. This isn't a minor error- this is a massive ton of ignorance.

Re:Geez- talk about getting history wrong

[edremy]

Quick follow up- China is mentioned briefly as having created incendiaries, but not explosives, in the same class as greek fire. (Missed it the first time) This is also dead wrong- the Chinese did have explosive formulations. Greek fire, OTOH, was not a nitre+fuel based mixture to the best of our knowledge, although the exact formula has been lost.

Re:Just remember to use cash.

[geekoid]

Cash cards make it safe.
As do those pesky things called banks.
When dealing with LARGE transaction, no body uses cash. They have accountants and they move money to different banks around the globe. When that's problematic, they create their own banks.

Seriously, this isn't 1930 anymore.