Favorite chemistry lab kit?

[Clemsondana]

We will be doing chemistry next year and I need to get something for labs. This particular kid is not one who loves hands-on things - he is fine with learning lab techniques and is gong to be agreeable with whatever I plan, but he has typically thought that doing an 'experiment' where the results are already known is just an really inefficient way to learn it compared to a book or video.  So, I want something that has good labs, but I don't need to go crazy and do a couple every week.  I am not opposed to getting a set that has more than we plan to do, though, as long as there are some good ones in it - my younger, who loves all things hands-on, would probably enjoy doing some of the others as part of  physical science in a year or 2.  

There are a lot of kits out there - some geared to go with particular textbooks, several all-in-one sets that aren't set to match any book...does anybody have one that they liked?  

And, on another note, if anybody has leads on finding the instructor's guide for Chang's Chemistry, 10th edition, please share!  I haven't come across it on Amazon or Ebay, although with many instructors not being on campus, I could imagine that there is less cleaning out and selling of old materials.  We should be fine with the textbook, student answers, and the AP prep book, but it would be nice to have!  

[Dicentra]

Hi Dana,

Is he doing AP Chemistry at home with you next year?  Have you looked at the microchem kit from QSL for AP Chemistry?

https://www.qualitysciencelabs.com/advanced-chemistry/advanced-microchem-kit/

I know that microscale labs aren't everyone's "cup of tea" 🙂 but for home use (safety and easy of disposal), I really like them.  QSL has based the kit and the lab manuals on the new (2013) guidelines for labs in AP Chemistry.  This shows how the labs are aligned with the curriculum:

https://www.qualitysciencelabs.com/advanced-curriculum-chemistry-framework

The kit comes with a student lab manual but you have to purchase the teacher's manual separately:

https://www.qualitysciencelabs.com/advanced-chemistry/advanced-microchem-teachers-handbook/

I use the high school level chem kits from QSL in my online courses and I like them. 🙂

[Clemsondana]

Thanks, @Dicentra!  We're aiming for AP, but if, as a 9th grader, he decides that it's too much then we'll switch things.  I think he'll be OK with it, though.  This kit looks perfect.  Do you have a favorite atomic model kit?  I have a space-filling one that I used to build a pair of nucleotides for my class so that students can find the 5' and 3' on the backbone and distinguish G-C and A-T pairs, but I figured that the kind with all of the sticks to represent bonds might be better for chemistry.  At any rate, I don't want to have to take apart and rebuild my nucleotides a couple of times a year so we'll leave that one at co-op and get another set for home.  🙂  

[daijobu]

Snatoms is a great molecular model because it actually represents the attraction between atoms.  And it looks more like overlapping orbitals than the ball and stick model.  

[Dicentra]

1 hour ago, ClemsonDana said:

Thanks, @Dicentra!  We're aiming for AP, but if, as a 9th grader, he decides that it's too much then we'll switch things.  I think he'll be OK with it, though.  This kit looks perfect.  Do you have a favorite atomic model kit?  I have a space-filling one that I used to build a pair of nucleotides for my class so that students can find the 5' and 3' on the backbone and distinguish G-C and A-T pairs, but I figured that the kind with all of the sticks to represent bonds might be better for chemistry.  At any rate, I don't want to have to take apart and rebuild my nucleotides a couple of times a year so we'll leave that one at co-op and get another set for home.  🙂  

You're welcome!  This is the one I suggest my organic chem/biochem course students get:

https://www.amazon.com/Molymod-MMS-008-Organic-Chemistry-Molecular/dp/B007FAZOVS/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&qid=1589330726&sr=8-1&srs=3513540011

It's relatively inexpensive, it has enough carbon atoms to build most simpler organic molecules, and it also has a few phosphorus and sulfur atoms so students can see the trigonal bipyramidal and octahedral VSEPR shapes of molecules that have central atoms with an expanded octet.

Ack!  Don't take apart your nucleotides - they'll take forever to rebuild! 😄  The space-filling models would be fine for chemistry, too.  Because chemists tend to draw Lewis diagrams with sticks for covalent bonds, there is some benefit in having the ball and stick model kit as the molecules they build more closely "match" what they see when they draw.  It's not a big deal, though, and students should be able to recognize a ball-and-stick model and a space-filling model of the same molecule as just two different representation of the same thing. 🙂  In fact, you can use the tiny short white connectors in the above linked kit to produce space-filling models as opposed to ball-and-stick.  You can't use those short connectors for multiple bonds, though, so you'd have to use the longer grey multiple bond connectors for multiple bonds no matter which type of model you're building.

1 hour ago, daijobu said:

Snatoms is a great molecular model because it actually represents the attraction between atoms.  And it looks more like overlapping orbitals than the ball and stick model.  

Those look cool, daijobu! 🙂

[Clemsondana]

I think I'm getting both...and the snatoms are making me feel guilty because almost every biology book, and bio teacher, talks about energy being 'stored' in the bonds between phosphate groups - that part of the molecule is described as 'like a compressed spring' in most books.  It's easy enough to think about the energy being released when the new molecule is phosphorylated with the phosphates that come from the ATP, but students don't usually learn about that until later classes - not intro bio, where most haven't had chemistry yet.  Of course, a chemical engineer friend gives me grief because hydrogen bonds aren't real bonds so I like to think of them as the fake bonds that hold your DNA together.  🙂  OK...off topic babbling is over, but doing chemistry again is going to be interesting.  I was actually a biochem major, but once I got to grad school (genetics, more molecular biology) I blocked all of that chemistry from my brain.  I think I'll like it better this time around.