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That brought back some memories! I got a killer chemistry set one Christmas and proceeded through the list of experiments ... until inevitably I had to see what happened if I dumped the leftover materials together in one big mix ... which was actually pretty disappointing! I remember it formed a sediment ...
I found out that if you cook a piece of prickly pear cactus (thorns removed with pliers) in an Easy Bake Oven, it doesn't taste any better than a piece of raw cactus. Cooking it made it go kind of limp and flabby. It pretty much sucked as cuisine goes, but I made everybody in my family try a bite of it. I would swear that the early Easy Bake Ovens were differently made than later models ... and were more realistic. I am not sure, but I remember some differences between my friend's newer model and mine. Hers had a lightbulb in it ... and I don't recall one in mine.
But some of the best toys were the castoffs from our parents' occupations. Used syringes (especially the larger diameter ones) make impromptu squirt guns. And who needs puny popsicle sticks for crafts when you can use industrial strength tongue depressors?
My husband had better toys than mine because he came from a family of engineers. He told me he once took a moderately large vial of mercury to school ... and accidentally dropped it on the floor, whence the little beads delighted his classmates in their furtive efforts to capture them. Can you imagine the stink something like that would cause in a modern school setting?
My Mom and I were playing with a newly acquired chemistry set. We had to have the kitchen painted.
Try frying up the prickly pear cactus pads in butter, oil or margarine. Pretty good that way.
"My husband had better toys than mine because he came from a family of engineers. He told me he once took a moderately large vial of mercury to school ... and accidentally dropped it on the floor, whence the little beads delighted his classmates in their furtive efforts to capture them. Can you imagine the stink something like that would cause in a modern school setting?"
I don't need to imagine it... when the Missus was teaching at a private school in Houston, some kid broke a thermometer and the school was shut down for three days for decontaminattion. Hazmat suits, the whole works. Nuts, I tell ya.
I used to play with mercury as a kid all the time, and it didn't damage my brain any. Oh, wait.
Yeah, I used to play with mercury also...and the damage to my brain is a matter of opinion I reckon.
When I was a lad a coveted plaything was a minature steam engine..the Sears and Screwyou and Monkey Wars catalog listed them in their Christmas Toy section.
Hooked up with the right gears they were powerful..but all we wanted was that steam whistle...
Yeah! Chemistry sets! They blowed up good!
Brett: I don't remember where I read or heard that you could eat cactuses ... but I couldn't let the statement go untested. Obviously I lacked the knowledge to do them up proper. Now ... I lack the cactuses!
Two things I lusted after as a kid: 1. miniature steam engine, pimped up to something appraoching critical mass, 2: mercury to feed chickens to see if the urban myth was true.
Sadly, never saw either. (Blew up a few things with C4, however)
I think that you and Steve Spangler must be brothers from another mother. I'm a teacher in Indiana who got hooked on doing hands-on science many years ago after attending a Steve Spangler workshop. After 22 years in the classroom, I retired and started a new career with Steve Spangler Science training early childhood teachers across the country. I'm fearful that children today may never have your childhood science experience if we don't teach teachers and parents how to help children wonder, discover and explore. Tinkering and play with toys like the Hydro-Dynamic kit are a thing of the past if we don't encourage our children to rediscover the lost art of play. From my standpoint, science and play go hand in hand.
I laughed when I saw the Hydro-Dynamic kit because SteveSpanglerScience.com used to carry a modern-day version of this product. Not sure if the product is still available, but I had one in my kindergarten classroom and the kids loved it.
Great post... thanks.
Ebay, baby, ebay. They must still be out there. Of course prices are sometimes in the stratosphere. Had a flea market seller try to extract $200 from me for a mismatched toolbox of erector-set stuff recently. I figured if it was $10 or $15 I'd get it for my kiddies.
Last time I removed an old thermostat (last year) I broke open the glass vial and my kids and I delighted in herding the mercury around the kitchen floor and counter, losing bits and pieces in the process.
I grew up drinking water from an arsenic-rich spring that flowed out of a mountain full of old mine tailings.
For the first 16 years of my life I never met an asthmatic (except for one city-kid who moved out to the country), or anyone with autism or an allergy to hard work, peanuts, eggs, wheat or any other damn thing except poison oak.
"Ebay, baby, ebay."
Try saying that five times in a row, really fast.
Didn't I send you an eBay listing of a chemistry set not too long ago?
Now, that Kenner set looks like it could make a damned fine Trinity test site.
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