Enjoyinglife365 Posted July 27, 2014 Share Posted July 27, 2014 Edited: What great feedback! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enjoyinglife365 Posted July 28, 2014 Author Share Posted July 28, 2014 ss Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mom22ns Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 I used his book, but I didn't buy a kit. I'm not a kit person, we have too many supplies on hand. The kits were new last year I think, but there was some discussion of them on this board. You might find it by searching if no one responds, but this will give you a bump :). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EKS Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 I bought a chemistry kit from him and it was missing half of the chemicals. I also thought that the manual was a whole lot more complicated than it needed to be. I have a degree in biochemistry and worked in a lab for many years so it's not like I don't know about science labs. We switched to Quality Science Labs and were much happier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robin in DFW Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 I purchased this last year with high hopes of a great lab experience. It did not happen. I have no chemistry background and this kit and the manual were so complicated I could not even help my son. There is no way he could have done it on his own. We ended up doing labs from our textbook. The kit was sold for a huge loss. I think a tried and true kit from Quality Science Labs (MIcroChem kit) would probably be a better choice. Robin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Julie of KY Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 I teach a class from his textbook (which is very different from his small scale kits). I have downloaded the instructions for the kits (since I already have the chemicals) and I find the instructions overly complicated as a source for homeschoolers looking for labs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
g1234 Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 See posts #20 and #30 here. My description of our experience is kind of embedded in that post. http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/508143-a-vent/?hl=%2Bg1234+%2Bthompson&do=findComment&comment=5539290 Basically, I agree with the pps. In fact, my feelings have become more negative as time passes and I hear of others' experiences with this lab kit. I may not be a scientist, but I love science, scored well on science APs, and know how to follow even complicated instructions. This lab manual was worse than useless. It was so convoluted and opaque (or else graduate level??) that it left us utterly helpless. Labs took >2x the time they were supposed to and we still didn't know what we were supposed to learn from them. A huge waste of money, and my kid had no chemistry lab component all year once we ditched these labs in utter defeat. This year she's doing physics, and I can only hope the QSL kit we bought will reverse her feeling from last year that she now hates labs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike in SA Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 We used their kit, downloaded the manual, and had very good experiences with it. You will have to determine how the labs match to the course sequence, which might be confusing for some. But he was very responsive to correcting shipping problems (quick, too). Some glass items will break in the original shipment, and there will be iodine stains on the bottles. Cleaning that up is a great science experiment - a little vitamin c makes the stain go away. What we liked about it was that it was as authentic as you could get for the price. A "real" kit of comparable breadth can run into the thousands of dollars, and cannot be ordered by just anyone. In the US, even high schools can't get to the "real" ones that colleges are able to apply for. Many chemicals have to be registered with the EPA. What you get from The Home Scientist is about as good as you are going to get at home, even if your budget is very high. The experiments were not documented for the casual teacher. He is (or at least was, at the time) a one-man shop, so don't expect documentation on par with the big publishing houses. For what he does, the documentation is excellent. But, it's best to have some basic understanding of what the equipment is before you set out to do his experiments. My wife and I both have scientific backgrounds, so we didn't find anything to be daunting at all. I'm not sure where the break-even point for comfort would be. You certainly don't need to be a chemist (we both just had college chemistry), but you probably do need to be comfortable with scientific equipment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enjoyinglife365 Posted July 30, 2014 Author Share Posted July 30, 2014 What great feedback! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EKS Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 The experiments were not documented for the casual teacher. He is (or at least was, at the time) a one-man shop, so don't expect documentation on par with the big publishing houses. For what he does, the documentation is excellent. But, it's best to have some basic understanding of what the equipment is before you set out to do his experiments. My wife and I both have scientific backgrounds, so we didn't find anything to be daunting at all. I'm not sure where the break-even point for comfort would be. You certainly don't need to be a chemist (we both just had college chemistry), but you probably do need to be comfortable with scientific equipment. This is certainly true. The issue I had with it was not that I couldn't understand the procedures (and whatever else he wrote), but that my *son* couldn't. It took quite a bit of time and energy for me to translate everything into language he could understand. Since the product is marketed for high school students, and since the lab manual is written to the student, it should be comprehensible to a high school student. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike in SA Posted July 31, 2014 Share Posted July 31, 2014 ANY kit will need guidance if it is worth its salt (no pun intended). After a couple of years of doing experiments, I might allow a child to do them with less supervision... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EKS Posted July 31, 2014 Share Posted July 31, 2014 ANY kit will need guidance if it is worth its salt (no pun intended). After a couple of years of doing experiments, I might allow a child to do them with less supervision... I'm not talking about doing the experiments with no supervision! I'm talking about understanding the background information and having some clue about what the experiment is about. If the manual was meant to be a teacher's manual, I'd have no problem with it, but it is written to the students, and as such, it should be understandable by students--high school students, as that is a the level the author indicates it is appropriate for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kareni Posted July 31, 2014 Share Posted July 31, 2014 What about Quality Science Labs MicroChem kit standard 2nd edition? My daughter used the MicroChem kit from Quality Science Labs when she did Chemistry in 10th grade. (This was some years ago, so it may have been the first edition.) It included a recommended order of labs for a variety of different curricula. I found the experiments to be fairly easy to perform; there were a few where her results went counter to how they "ought" to have gone but such is life (and science!). The kit is truly self contained with only a couple of needed additional materials (i.e., distilled water, a voltmeter). We used a burner rather than purchasing an alcohol lamp. The kit is lacking as regards the writing of lab reports. Most of the labs require data to be collected and have questions to be answered; however, there is no lab report per se. Regards, Kareni Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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