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A requiem for amateur chemistry

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Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#91

Post by atemerev »

https://melscience.com/US-en/chemistry/ — chemical kits (with some very interesting reagents and experiments) by subscription, something new for your kids (and yourselves) for $30/month.

(not affiliated by them, just a happy customer)

…and, DIY genetic engineering kits: splice some genes and grow fluorescent yeast. https://www.the-odin.com/

…and, you can follow any of the numerous Youtube instructions for building a DIY Wilson chamber (with some isopropyl alcohol and dry ice), buy some uranium salts (perfectly legal in the US), and watch elementary particles with your own eyes!

…and, it is possible to open an actual Sigma-Aldrich account as a hobbyist researcher, and buy nearly anything you want, after signing some papers that you won’t be making drugs, explosives and stuff! (their reactives are insanely expensive though).

…and, you can build a fusor and do real nuclear fusion in your garage! (This is a big project with about $10,000 in the bill of materials, but still accessible to amateurs (some 14 year old kids built working fusors successfully), and with great and supporting community of other people who already built their own neutron source).

…and you can construct a homemade nitrogen laser! Works for real, very dangerous. There are other amateur laser constructions.

Everything is possible if you know where to look.

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#92

Post by qbasic_forever »

boppo1 wrote: post #81
qbasic_forever wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Everything I learned in my first chem class was just bad rehashing of electron orbits and configurations from physics. I'm sure things get more interesting with organic chemistry, but the classical stuff/basic elements I thought were easier to understand just thinking about the physics of their atomic structure.

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#93

Post by Auracle »

gnull wrote: post #71
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'…

Don't governments allow it when it's done under supervision?

Maybe, but while my high school chemistry teacher okayed me making a small batch of nitroglycerin, the principal very much did not.

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#94

Post by melony »

excite1997 wrote: post #37
melony wrote: post #2

Not a fair take. If you have the pre-requisite knowledge, it is easier than ever. Just order the ingredients online (even the semi-regulated ones can be easily obtained from overseas) at prices that are impossibly low compared to the RadioShack days where everything is overpriced with value being mostly captured by thermofisher middlemen and retailers. I think the lack of science kits is because CS, iPads and coding…

Sure, it's easier than ever to break the law, but not sure that's a fair argument. In many parts of Europe - e.g., in Germany and in the UK - the purchase of many common "dangerous" reagents is regulated and illegal without a license that isn't available to hobbyists. The government takes the view that it's simply not a legitimate hobby. In the US, the situation is better, but some essential chemicals are unobtainabl…

You don't understand the industry. You are thinking in the context of nice academic labs with thick budgets.

Where do you think the fentanyl people are getting their ingredients from? Asia. You can easily get most industrial/pharmaceutical chemistry pre-cursors and analogues/isomers for the semi-legal/regulated substances. Whether it can clear customs is another story but for kitchen chemistry the internet is more than sufficient.

Go to an aggregator like "Alibaba" and do a search. You will be surprised at what you can find.

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#95

Post by epicureanideal »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #82
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!

The valuable ones are so rare as to be counted on one hand.

(And likely even if that hand were missing several fingers from mistakes in amateur chemistry.)

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#96

Post by melony »

majormajor wrote: post #87
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…

The mathematics of radios are a lot more difficult than the basic boolean logic and discrete math for intro to programming. Radios and circuits are in differential equations territory. A thorough explanation of the RF concept of "ground" and transmission lines is impossible to do at the high school level without handwaving away most of the details.

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#97

Post by hoseja »

atemerev wrote: post #90
bsder wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's very easy to think up balanced reactions that are completely nonsensical and the reason for that is hidden deep in quantum realm.

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#98

Post by int_19h »

an_aparallel wrote: post #45
dylan604 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what popped into my head as well. In situations where you have multiple phases so that Phase A is required to reach a certain temp before adding Phase B, but Phase A must reach a specific temp then cool back down within a range before adding Phase B. Once Phase A and Phase B are combined, do you stir, blend, whisk, whip, etc? What happens when you need to use 0.14 grams, but add 0.15 grams? Each little varian…

sorry i'm not sure whos comment to reply under - so i'll just stick it here - thanks for the explanations :) I am ignorant of maths, chem, comp science...so my question was posed purely for my own knowledge. What i described could be likened to raytracing for light...but for chemicals... If something like this is possible, would there be no use or other limitations to making a "descriptive" simulation. ie. libraries…

It's more like, we can do raytracing, but what's really needed here is simulating actual photons scattering, complete with all the quantum effects that involves.

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#99

Post by hoseja »

musictubes wrote: post #13

The author mentions cyanotypes and salt printing. Photography is what got me interested in chemistry as a kid. Understanding how film, paper, light, and chemicals all interacted was a lot of fun. Even figuring out how to make your prints last (proper clearing, toning, and washing etc.) involved understanding chemistry at a basic level. Most of the at home chemistry experiments they list are one and done. I’d be surpr…

Craziest thing, basically the same process is still used to make microprocessors.

Re: A requiem for amateur chemistry

#100

Post by watwut »

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…

It is not like average teenager understood those in 1950 however. And it is not even the case that kids today were less educated either.

You have today individual kids doing leetcode on pretty high level. You have then doing a lot of stuff, but it is different stuff. Meanwhile radio and circuits are not cool anymore nor new anymore. Comparably less people is even interested.

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