buying chemicals and equipment for the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments

[Julie of KY]

Supplies for the BOOK – Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments

(IMPORTANT NOTE: The CK01A Standard/Honors Home School Chemistry Laboratory Kit is put together by the same author and is very different from the book. In my opinion, it is better than most boxed chemistry sets, but it is not the same as the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. Buying this set will NOT give you the chemicals or the supplies needed to the book Illustrated Guide.)

 

I’ve been teaching from this book to groups of students in my garage since 2009 and I’ve taken many students completely through the book.

 

Probably the easiest way to buy supplies for this book is to buy the sets put together by Elemental Scientific or at least use these lists as your list of needed supplies. If you go to the Elemental Scientific website and look under chemistry sets, these are listed. I’ll give my comments below. If you already own some of the supplies or chemicals, you can buy everything individually based on these supply lists. I do not know if these sets have been discounted as a set.

 

The Basic Chemical Set ($44) – If you are going to the effort of buying everything else, I’d go ahead and buy the Standard Set as it includes all these chemicals.

http://www.elementalscientific.net/store/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=37

 

The Standard Chemical Set ($77) – Includes all the chemicals in the basic set and many more. This is a great set to get you started.

http://www.elementalscientific.net/store/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=34

 

The Advanced Chemical set ($115) – This set only includes the advanced chemicals. To do labs with these chemical you would need both this set and the standard set of chemicals. You could easily start with the standard set and later purchase this if you want to do more. Some of the more advanced labs are a lot of fun.

http://www.elementalscientific.net/store/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=36

 

Note: These chemical sets are for one student. If you have a second student, you don’t necessarily have to buy ALL of the chemicals again. Some of the chemicals are used in large quantities by one student. For other chemicals, one ounce is enough for many students.

 

Glassware set ($104) – This is a great list, but I would modify it a little.

http://www.elementalscientific.net/store/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=38

I would not buy the 100ml or 500ml Erlenmyer flasks. You do need the two 250ml flasks for one lab and then they can be used anytime you need these flasks even if the book calls for a 100ml flask. You never need the 500ml flask for student chemistry – only if you were doing more experiments on a larger scale.

 

I’d not buy the 1ml Mohr’s pipette – just use the 10ml pipette or a graduated cylinder. This is not a critical measurement in any of these labs.

 

I’d leave out the spot plate and just use a watchglass instead.

 

You don’t need capillary tubes for the Illlustrated Guide.

 

I would consider buying six 150 ml beakers rather than just three.

 

You will need the burette (and burette brush) only if you are doing the advanced labs. I do think the titration labs using the burette are great labs.

 

I buy all my glassware from Home Science Tools. I find their prices to be better on glassware and their customer service is way better. I do like the Mohr’s pipette from Elemental Scientific better than HST, but that is the only exception.

 

Hardware Set ($127) – This is a great list, but a few things are missing. Again, if you’ve done any chemistry, you may already have some of these supplies. Personally, I’ve bought everything on this list, but I’ve compared prices between HST and Elemental Scientific. I was also buying for more than one student so that may have influenced my decisions. I LIKE all my hardware bought from Elemental Scientific.

http://www.elementalscientific.net/store/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=35

 

Other things you need (this list is off the top of my head and may not be complete):

Goggles, apron, chemical gloves (don’t use basic disposable gloves)

Balance

Hotplate and/or gas burner (I use both a single portable electric burner from Walmart as well as a Coleman camp stove). An alcohol burner does not get hot enough for all labs.

Digital Multimeter – needed to do electrochemistry labs (If you are skipping these labs, then you also don’t need the electrodes and test lead with alligator clips.)

Storage bottles for solutions as you mix them up. These can be bottles from around the house, but I have bought a bunch from HST.

pH meter – for acid/base labs; you can substitute pH paper but I prefer the pH meter for these labs.

Calorimeter (optional) – the book tells how to do the labs with Styrofoam cups or a calorimeter

Laser pointer needed for one lab (chp 18)

Digital thermometer (optional) – nice to have

Acetone

Lighter fluid

Vinegar (this is 1 M acetic acid)

Household ammonia

Other various things such as matches, Styrofoam cups, etc.

 

When thinking of how to store chemicals note that glacial acetic acid freezes at 62 degrees F.

 

A Note about Elemental Scientific:

I started with the forewarning on the bottom of this page by the author about Elemental Scientific.

http://www.homechemlab.com/sources.html

I generally buy all my glassware from HST and all my chemicals from Elemental Scientific. I think how they do some of their business is poor, but I like their prices.

 

Elemental Scientific is hard to contact. Years ago, I had no luck contacting them. Over the past two years they have been easy for me to contact. I’m not sure if this means they are improving. The initial order usually takes several weeks. Once it was shipped within a week, always within a month. Usually something is backordered for up to three months. The actual shipping charges are not always the same as what is listed on the website when I check out. The charges may change up or down by about 10% in my experience. It is also a hassle to navigate their website and annoying that I cannot save my cart.

 

Hope this helps in your adventures with chemistry lab.

[Julie of KY]

I put the above list together since I think there is a lot of confusion between if the chemistry sets sold by the Home Scientists are the same as his Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. I think the chemistry sets that he sells are a reasonable, economical way to do chemistry labs, but they are not at all the same as doing the book - Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. There are many suppliers of chemicals and equipment. but I know it is difficult to put together a list of needed supplies from just the book. I did it when the book first came out and it is a huge hassle to wade through the information.

[swimmermom3]

:cheers2: Julie - you are fabulous!

 

About that burette - that was one of my area's of dissatisfaction. Last year, my oldest son studied titration but did his lab in a virtual chemistry lab. I was so fascinated and really wanted to get my hands on the equipment. Is it really do-able at home? I think MIT had a video somewhere of prepping your equipment.

 

Thank you again. I have combed science texts before for lab supply lists and it is pain-staking at best. Your generosity is appreciated.

[Julie of KY]

Sure the burette is doable at home. The Illustrated Guide has three labs that use the burette. The first is 11.4 which teaches the basics of acid/base titration.

 

Later in the book, you use the burette to titrate and calculate the concentration of bleach and then to calculate the amounts and types of salt in seawater. (You can use actual ocean water which is the most fun, or buy the salt from an aquarium store to "make" seawater.)

 

editted to add: there is at least one other lab in Illustrated Guide that uses a burette, but I just find it annoying.

 

For Illustrated Guide you need a 50 ml burette. I greatly prefer one with a plastic or ground glass stopcock over a glass-bead stopcock.

[vonfirmath]

BTW the guy who wrote this is a regular guy. He has a blog you can leave messages at here: http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/

 

(He used to have a message board where I was active for a time. But evidently that has gone away). Anyways, you can go back in the history and see how he happened to come up with this. AS I recall at least part of it was a next door neighbor who was interested in science and the poor education in science she was getting at the schools. There was a lot of reminiscing about the science kits folks had when they were kids and such.