On Tue, 6 Nov 2001, Eric Dittman wrote:
> Fortunately the acids available in the chemistry sets weren't very
> concentrated,
But any kid knows that you can get some better acid out of the car
battery.
> I wonder if children's chemistry sets still come with all the
> interesting chemicals?
Not a chance. The more modern sets have half a dozen varieties of
food-coloring (and "experiments" of watching it dissipate in a jug of
water).
There will never be any more great chemists who started out with a
chemistry set.
BTW, the primary maker of the sets (back when they were REAL) was
GILBERT. They're the same folks who brought you Erector (R) sets.
For the yery young here:
Erector sets were a BIG box of small pieces of metal, with nuts, bolts,
axles, gears, electric motor, etc. Still a great prototyping system.
(One of the PcJRs that I sold at VCF came from IBM as a diskless system -
the drive mounted in it was mounted with Erector set pieces.)
But,.. in our litigious society obsessed with liability, they removed all
of the swallowable sized pieces, all of the metal parts, all of the brass
gears, the 110V motor, ...
There will never be any more great mechanics/mechanical engineers who
started out with an Erector set.
Hmmm. Are there any "Electrical Sets" that are worthy of the name?
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin_at_xenosoft.com
NOTE: My ISP is having some problems. If you have difficulty reaching me
at this e-mail address, you can leave a message at:
fcisin_at_merritt.edu
cisin_at_info.sims.berkeley.edu
Received on Tue Nov 06 2001 - 11:40:49 GMT