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A requiem for amateur chemistry

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Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#81

Post by boppo1 »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #60
mncharity wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> chemistry suffers from being actually quite difficult field I wonder how much of that is inherent, and how much is artifact of highly suboptimal education? Chemistry education research has been unusually scathing, characterizing chem ed content using adjectives like "incoherent". My favorite high-school state standard insisted students be taught both that atoms are conserved in chemical reactions, and that atoms ar…

For me it was only once I realized chemistry is just a specialization of physics that I really started to understand and care about it more. I learned way more about chemistry from a couple college physics classes than the chem class and lab I was required to take.

Out-of-school chem self-studier here. Can you elaborate?

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#82

Post by fnordpiglet »

possiblydrunk wrote: post #63

It's a pity that governments have deemed 'interesting' chemistry an illegitimate hobby. Many chemists and biologists I know were inspired as kids by potentially risky chemical reactions - they were fun :). My boss grew up in the UK, relished those experiments growing up, and said they led him to eventually complete a PhD in chemistry. He later went on to win a Nobel Prize (as a molecular biologist, though). Maybe we'…

But think about all the valuable product managers we have instead!

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#83

Post by cossatot »

Victerius wrote: post #31
ekianjo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can probably start with college level books since they dont really teach much chemistry in high school anyway.

I was thinking about something less expensive and beefy than one of those $100+, 800 pages textbooks. [1] [2] [3] [4] Something closer in format to the MIT Essential Knowledge Series. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Chemistry-Rich-Bauer/dp/... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Chemistry-Introduction-General-Organi... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Introductory-Chemistry-6th-Nivaldo-Tr... [4] https://www.amazon.com/Intro…

You can get used, earlier-edition college textbooks very cheaply. The question sets are changed each edition but the text is not meaningfully. I buy some for fun reading and some for reference.

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#84

Post by andrewflnr »

mncharity wrote: post #36
zokier wrote: post #5

To me chemistry suffers from being actually quite difficult field. Even by doing these sorts of experiments it is difficult to build up good intuition and actually start using chemistry to achieve some specific goals; contrast to e.g. electronics or programming where after some very basics you can start building your own things

> chemistry suffers from being actually quite difficult field I wonder how much of that is inherent, and how much is artifact of highly suboptimal education? Chemistry education research has been unusually scathing, characterizing chem ed content using adjectives like "incoherent". My favorite high-school state standard insisted students be taught both that atoms are conserved in chemical reactions, and that atoms ar…

A great man[0] once said, "Chemistry is easy, you just remember all the rules, and remember all the exceptions to the rules."

[0] https://www.youtube.com/c/ExplosionsFire2 I couldn't find the specific video, despite having a great time of rewatching a bunch of them. Amateur chemistry isn't quite dead yet. Ed: found it https://youtu.be/psUc_oBXE6c?t=18

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#86

Post by hlehmann »

My father was a physicist, working for Westinghouse for many years when they did R&D in phosphors & other lighting. When I was a kid in the 60's he had a combination darkroom and chemistry lab in our basement. Every Sunday afternoon was dedicated to a chemistry demonstration. We kids were mostly interested in the experiments that went boom, of course. He had a shelf of chemicals of all sorts; liquid mercury, various acids, you name it. I guess he just "borrowed" them from his lab at the office. We would make hydrogen balloons by mixing zinc with hydrochloric acid in an empty coke bottle. We would grew walnut sized crystals of copper sulphate and other molecules. He bought a giant Fresnel lens from Edmund Scientific that we would use to melt lead using just the sun. When I became a father I would do things like the ammonium dichromate volcano for my kids; now you can't even buy that stuff anymore without being suspected of terrorism.

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#87

Post by majormajor »

wrp wrote: post #65

Another aspect of this issue is the apparent difference in intellectual preparedness of kids today. I think this is partly due to educational environment and partly a result of selection bias (in that accounts of the past focus on the "smart" kids). When I was a teenager, rummaging around the attic at grandma's house I stumbled upon my dad's old scientific stuff. I was shocked at the sophistication of what a high sch…

Actually-educational things for kids haven't gone away entirely, though they've certainly changed shape. There are a lot of kids and teenager related products around programming and microcontroller-related hobby projects that teach and require deeper understanding of the concepts. Building a radio, on the other hand, when AM/FM radio is now 90-100 years old instead of 20-30... that wouldn't interest me nearly as much anyway.

At the extreme end of "kids today" (ok, ten years ago), you have Palmer Luckey building VR headsets.

Does anyone have figures on what percentage of 1950s kids were using those sophisticated chemistry or radio kits?

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#88

Post by noufalibrahim »

I had a Salter Science set as a kid and did a lot of things very interesting for a 12 year old. The set didn't have any of the equipment for electrochemistry so I pulled out carbon rods from old batteries and got the rest of the stuff myself.

The manual was pretty good too. I bought reagents and glassware off Amazon to try to get my kids interested but they don't seem to be that keen on the idea.

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#89

Post by georgeecollins »

I have had a lot of fun with model rockets with my kids. But it has gotten so much more difficult to find a place to legally launch a model rocket in California. And you are extremely restricted on what you can do with a rocket.

I get the idea of not wanting to start a fire, and not wanting to use fuel that is dangerous but it goes way past that. Fireworks are more dangerous, and so is the way most people drive around my neighborhood. I think the nanny state went way overboard on model rockets, IMO.

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#90

Post by atemerev »

bsder wrote: post #74
zokier wrote: post #5

To me chemistry suffers from being actually quite difficult field. Even by doing these sorts of experiments it is difficult to build up good intuition and actually start using chemistry to achieve some specific goals; contrast to e.g. electronics or programming where after some very basics you can start building your own things

The problem is that you need to be fairly far up the chain of mathematics and physics before you can build intuition about inorganic chemstry. Oddly, organic chemistry is, to a certain extent, easier to build intutition about as the lower levels are a lot of "this reaction takes thingit A from the molecule and puts on thingit B with n% efficiency." This make organic very similar to solving jigsaw puzzles.

Come on, I was balancing equations at the age of 8. Knowing the multiplication table is enough.
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