I see a lot of reactionism on this thread regarding "kids and chemistry sets". I agree but disagree. With the right supervision, it's awesome. The latter is key.
I had multiple chemistry sets and am not dead and have all my fingers. In fact I was always, with the aid of reference books, mixing various things together purchased from every day shops, purchasing piles of fireworks and doing things frowned upon.
At my secondary school in the early 1990's we were allowed to help ourselves to stuff in the chemical larder as long as we told them what it was for and did the lab safety test first. It was stuffed full of small chunks of Uranium, sodium (under oil) and all sorts of nasty shit that could easily kill you without much notice.
Inevitably we passed that as too dangerous and proceeded to stock up on fumic nitric acid, formaldehyde and ammonia. This was done with supervision.
About two hours later, in a fume cupboard, we had 50g of RDX (C4 precursor) which was considerably more dangerous than the above. We carried this in a metal flask on a public bus to local GSK labs where they did NMR spectroscopy on it. People were interested and quite helpful there. Then we took it to the school field and blew 10g of it up with a magnesium taper. The rest was disposed of by the lab techns (probably by doing the same because they were slightly nuts).
We extracted Aspirin from willow, made RDX, various plastics, thermite, did glasswork, extracted our own DNA, made fireworks and countless other things I can't remember now that were cool.
Now we would be branded terrorists.
Chemistry was awesome and no one was hurt. My understanding for the universe from a physics and chemistry perspective is pretty good due to this.
The kids who grew up with this kind of chemistry sets in the 1920s to 1960s were the kids who grew up to be the scientists and engineers who built the internet, landed on the moon and split the atom.
When I was a kid, as a part of my education I learned how to use a band saw, did chemistry experiments and learned how to weld with MIG and solder with an oxy-acetylene flame, even do some radioactive experiments. Yes, there was adult supervision but only one adult per 15-20 kids.
This was less than 15 years ago, and during that time we've seen a huge shift in the mentality. One lost thumb was deemed acceptable if the rest of the kids learned how to use the band saw. These days kids live their sheltered lives and are not exposed to dangerous situation they have to learn to deal with.
Technology is getting more, not less, complicated and learning to deal with the basics - like chemistry, electricity and radioactivity - at an early age will become more important, not less.
The world out there is dangerous in many ways, learning to manage risks and deal responsibly with dangerous materials and tools is an invaluable skill.
PS. I, too, would like to have this chemistry set but unfortunately they can't ship it outside the US.
I recall lighting the dinning room table on fire with one of these. Yet... I too still have all my fingers. Luckily my grandmother was over that day to put out the fire before the house burned. Supervision is a good idea.
At the age of 8, my grandmother gave me a box of matches, some newspaper and told me to play in the garden. Shortly afterwards her shed and fence were well on their way to being no more and I knew how quickly fire spread. Couldn't agree more.
I had multiple chemistry sets and am not dead and have all my fingers. In fact I was always, with the aid of reference books, mixing various things together purchased from every day shops, purchasing piles of fireworks and doing things frowned upon.
At my secondary school in the early 1990's we were allowed to help ourselves to stuff in the chemical larder as long as we told them what it was for and did the lab safety test first. It was stuffed full of small chunks of Uranium, sodium (under oil) and all sorts of nasty shit that could easily kill you without much notice.
Inevitably we passed that as too dangerous and proceeded to stock up on fumic nitric acid, formaldehyde and ammonia. This was done with supervision.
About two hours later, in a fume cupboard, we had 50g of RDX (C4 precursor) which was considerably more dangerous than the above. We carried this in a metal flask on a public bus to local GSK labs where they did NMR spectroscopy on it. People were interested and quite helpful there. Then we took it to the school field and blew 10g of it up with a magnesium taper. The rest was disposed of by the lab techns (probably by doing the same because they were slightly nuts).
We extracted Aspirin from willow, made RDX, various plastics, thermite, did glasswork, extracted our own DNA, made fireworks and countless other things I can't remember now that were cool.
Now we would be branded terrorists.
Chemistry was awesome and no one was hurt. My understanding for the universe from a physics and chemistry perspective is pretty good due to this.
I would buy this chemistry set in a second.