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Kids' Chemistry Sets: KABOOM! · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Jerry's here too, floating around somewhere out there. And that
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: makes the stuff you should know.
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: You thought of this one, and Dave helped us out
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: with the research on chemistry sets. I will go ahead
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: and to say that I never had a chemistry set,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: but you know darn well that somebody in my family did,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: was it Scott? Oh, of course he did. He was
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: voted most likely to have a chemistry set in preschool.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: That's a Did he do anything magical with it?
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, I just remember him having it in it,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: being around the house, and you know, he's just always
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: had a more scientifically minded brain than me and has
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: always been smarter than me from the drop. So he
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: was into chemistry sets, and I was into you know,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: baseball cards.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Well, I was into baseball cards too. I was gonna say,
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: don't feel bad because I didn't have a chemistry set either,
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: but I did have like an electrical set, like the
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: electrical version of a chemistry So, yeah, you do all
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: sorts of stuff, Yeah, yeah, And I distinctly remember just
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: hitting it with a hammer because I had no idea
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: what was going on with that thing.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: You can't build a circuit.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: No, you could put a gun to my head and
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: be like, build a circuit, and I'd just start hitting
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: it with a hammer. I think you know.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Who got good at that is a friend of the
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: show and Palavars in real.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Life, David Reese. Oh yeah, he.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Got into circuitry and like building and refurbishing old like
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: musical electronics and pedals and stuff like that.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: What an interesting dude. If you don't know who Dave
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Reese is, yeah, go look up. What's the name of
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: this book about artisanal pencil sharpened?
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I think it's how to sharpen pencils. See outside A
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: great TV show that I'm not sure if you can
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: find it, but you can try.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: Called Going Deep with day Man.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: It was so good.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: But you know, it's like how to shake someone's hand.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Stuff like that seems very intuitive, but not through David's
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: odd point of view.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: He also was on Dick Town with Hodgmen.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Right, that's right, and he can build the heck out
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: of a circuit. I bet you had a chemistry set.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Too, very nice. I know that Dave Russ, who helps
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: us with this, said that he had one of those
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: electronic sets too. Dave's pretty sharp, so I'm presuming he
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: didn't hit it with the hammer.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: But this is a pretty fun when we're going to
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: talk about the history of chemistry sets, which, believe it
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: or not, go back to the eighteenth century when they
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: were called chemical chests. But this was pre let's make
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: this a toy for kids. It was like, Hey, if
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: you're a university student or a professional or amateur young chemist,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: button chemist.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Do you like to wear capes?
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, you like a smock, get a chemistry set, right.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: So the first one, actually they traced it back to
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: I named You're gonna make me say his name? Huh.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Watch this, yeah, Johann Friedrich August Goudding.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: Nay, not bad, may mean not bad.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: That was dead on the nose.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: I think it was perfect.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: I think I can hear our German listeners giving me
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: a standing ovation right now.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: Ah vundebar.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: He came up with a chemistry chest in I think
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: seventeen eighty nine, if I didn't say that already, and
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: it was called garay for this a portable chest of
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: chemistry or a complete collection of chemical tests for the
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: use of chemists, physicians, mineralogists, metallurgists, scientific artists, manufacturers, farmers
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: and cultivators of natural philosophy and party boys.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: And again this thing wasn't a toy.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: It had thirty five chemicals, had a very robust like balance,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: you know, like a balance for weighing things, had a
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: mortar and pestle.
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  Speaker 3: Of course, it had a book.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: And this is kind of as you'll see a key
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: with all chemistry sets is a come with a book
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: of experiments. Otherwise you're just going to be dangerous. You
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: might be anyway, But this one had about one.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: Hundred and fifty experiments.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: And interestingly it had this platinum foil included that they
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: would not include now because this stuff was very valuable.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: I believe in today dollars would be worth about a
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: thousand bucks.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Wow, if the price is right, that's right. The reason
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: they include platinum foil is platinum is a really valuable
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: and useful catalyst and a lot of chemical reactions. It
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: wasn't just to show.
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: Off, no, of course not so.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: There were other early chemistry sets too. Like you said
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: they were for grown ups, they were for chemistry professionals,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: and people used to train to be chemistry professionals and
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: go to college for it. Still do. But there was
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: a guy at the University of Pennsylvania's medical school all
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: the way back in seventeen ninety seven named James Woodhouse,
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: and he was a professor of chemistry, and he also
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: had a nice little sideline selling chemistry chests to his
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: students and being like, you really won't get an A
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: or even maybe past this class if you don't buy
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: my chemistry set.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, not bad.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: It's like when the professor wrote the book that you're
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: exact textbook. One little just sort of fun fact that
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Dave threw in here was this was pre test tube.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: They didn't have test tubes yet. So in both of
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: these early eighteenth century chemistry chests they said to use wineglasses.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: Very nice, very swanky.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: So there was also even back then, well maybe not
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: back in the seventeen hundreds, but certainly very quickly after that. No,
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go ahead and say the seventeen hundreds
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: in everybody was like this is not just like interesting
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: and you can do stuff with it. This can be
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: kind of fun too, Like it's fun to take two
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: chemicals and suddenly make these two clear things turn blue.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Who doesn't love that kind of thing. And so there
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: was always a certain element of magic to chemistry, and
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: in particular chemistry sets, and eventually people started like selling
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: them as that, not just as that, but there was
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: a transition from just for chemical professionals chemists, to for
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: chemists but also for chemists who'd like to have a
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: good time.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there were and we talked about this before,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: like scientific demonstrations in the you know, nineteenth century could
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: be everything from just like straight up science to a
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: little little magic, a little showmanship, involved a little flare.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: People like Faraday were doing stuff like this in public.
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  Speaker 1: There was a chemist named Frederick Acam I guess Accum
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  Speaker 1: who would do these big public demonstrations that were, you know,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: kind of part magic show, part science, and you could
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: even buy one of his sets. He had a chemistry set.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: I don't think they were called chess at this point,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: called alums still called the chests. Oh yeah, there it
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: is in the title Acom's Chest of Chemical Amusement again,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: which you know lends itself to amusement. I think that
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: was the booklet was called Chemical amusement colon a series
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: of curious and instructive experiments in chemistry which are easily
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: performed and unattended by danger.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: That's important right there. Yeah, because one of the things
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: that kind of got all over chemistry sets over the
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: years was safety. And this was even like back in
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: the early nineteenth century that they were like, these can
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: be dangerous. So yeah, that was a big, a big
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: thing that he included that in the title of the
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: booklet that came with it.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, and all of this, you know, talk
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: of sort of magic and fun is a is a
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: long way to get to the fact that by the
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: sort of early ish eighteen hundreds and like eighteen thirty five,
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  Speaker 1: they started saying, hey, these like we should sell these
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  Speaker 1: to kids.
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  Speaker 3: These are fun.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: You know who's trustworthy kids?
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
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  Speaker 1: There was one called the Eedies Youth Laboratory from eighteen
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  Speaker 1: thirty five. A few years later was Statham's Students Chemical Laboratory,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: and then by eighteen fifty six they had one called
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Pike's Youth Chemical Cabinet.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Wow, chemical cabinet sounds amazing, it does. And then by
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: the time the twentieth century rolled around, so they were
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: making these things here or there for centuries by now
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: finally they were like, Okay, our market is young people
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: who are enthusiastic about chemistry, but also again wear capes
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: because they like magic. And one of the good examples
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: that Dave turned up about this was came out in
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  Speaker 2: nineteen hundred. It was Kingsley's Primus Chemical Magic and Practical
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  Speaker 2: Chemistry Cabinet, and it had everything you needed to carry
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: out like these serious chemistry experiments. And it came with
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: a booklet too that had plenty of instructions, but it
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: also had a lot of stuff to set things on
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  Speaker 2: fire and instructions on how to essentially make fireworks and
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: things like that.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would love to see a Venn diagram of
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  Speaker 1: gen X kids who had chemistry sets.
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, who could.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Pull a rabbit out of a hat or a card
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: out of somebody's ear and like knew how to do
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: the Rubik's cube and draw a flip book.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: That's the trifecta.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was my brother in a nutshell.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Sure it's like oh Ruber's cube, Sure you.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: Want to see how to solve it.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: But he wouldn't even say watch this. He'd be like, here,
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: let me help you.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: Right exactly.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: I also, just as a little side note, I'm like,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: why did they call that a primus chemistry cabinet? So
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: it turns out primus, one of the definitions of it
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: is a small stove that burns paraffin, so presumably that
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: was included in the kid as like a Bunsen burner.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: And it went a little deeper. I was like, okay,
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: why is the band Imus called Primus? And it turns
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: out they were originally called the Primates. There was another
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: band called the Primates that said we will sue the
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: pants off of you if you call yourself the Primates.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: So less Claypool and friends looked up primate definitions and
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: words and found out that Primus is the root word
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: for Primates, so they went with Primus instead.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Look at that one of my most hated bands of
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: all time. Really yeah, I hate Primus, And you know
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: what I'm gonna hear from Primis fans.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: You are not yuck and you'r yum.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: I love for you to love what you love, but
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: I've got to be able to hate Primis as well.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Sure they can't yung. You're yuck. Yeah, like everybody, It's
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: not like you're telling them not to listen, or that
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: they suck for listening.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: No, I'm sure they're great for certain years. It's just
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: that's not mine.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: They have some good songs, though Chuck Jerry was a
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: race car driver. You honestly don't like that song, no, okay,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: all right.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: They also sound the same to me. They all sound
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: like his bass just all sounds.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Like that was really good impression actually, and.
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: All the singing and just Downrue too.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't like Primis.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: I don't like it. Checks out. One of my very
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: best friends loves Primus, and so you know we cannot we.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Can all co exist, You're like, so I can say that, Yeah, exactly.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: A lot of my friends are Primis fans. All right,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: let's take a break and we'll enter the twenty twenties,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: twentieth century right after this.
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: Sure loss a much stuff from Josh and shuck stuff fui.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Okay, So I think, like I said, in the early
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: twenty century, they were like, yep, young boys who are
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: interested in chemistry, And let's go back and emphasize this boys.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: That's who we're going to market these things too. Yeah,
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: this is who chemistry sets belonged to. Like little Boy
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: scientists who have an interest in chemistry, and the thing
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: that went basically throughout the twentieth century, at least up
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: until like the sixties. If you bought a chemistry set
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: for your kid, like that was the first step toward
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: being a professional chemist as they grew up.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you were guaranteed to have a little boy
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: on the front box.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: One hundred percent.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: That's just the way it was back then.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: And we'll get to more of that sort of weird
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: sexism and science that still continues today in a little bit.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: But one of the big players, there were a couple
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: of big ones. The first one was the Kim Craft Company.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Kimkraft Chemistry Set in nineteen sixteen was the first really
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: sort of popular toy chemistry set produced by the Porter
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Chemical Company out of Merryland, and it was about a
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: buck fifty to maybe ten bucks if you were pretty
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: well healed, because that's it's about forty to three hundred
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: bucks today, so some pretty decent money you'd have to
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: throw down on the high end chemistry set back then.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, these had test tubes.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: By this point, you had an alcohol lamp, of course,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: you had your weights and balances, and you had lots
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: of chemicals.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like a serious chemistry set. It had
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: like all this stuff you needed, and it was substantial
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: in form right. The manual also was like we're going
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: to do some serious stuff. One of the first experiments
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: from this manual came from nineteen nineteen. That edition is
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: called Combination of Elements, and basically, you put powdered zinc
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: and sulfur on a metal spoon and start heating it.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Be sure to quote keep your face at a little distance.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: And then as the mass becomes hot, the sulfur takes
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: fire and burns, and then the mixture starts to swell
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: to a bulky porous mass while on fire, and then
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: suddenly there's a flash and sulfur and zinc unite, chemically
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: forming zinc sulfide, and hopefully you have your eyebrows left afterwards.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny, Like the literal quote was keeping your
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: face at a little distance, and the first three times
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: I read that, I read it as keeping your little
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: face at a distance.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, I wish they'd said that that's adorable.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: It was.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: It should have been keep your little face at a
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: great distance, because that was dangerous. There was also something
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: called fire ink, which is exactly what you think is
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: you would combine, or you may not know what you combined,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: but you know what the result probably is. You combine
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: potassium nitrate and water in a test tube and then
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: write on a piece of paper and light that on fire,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: and you know what you have spelled out is now
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: on fire.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so the potassium nitrate water is the ink, the
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: fire ink, as it were, which sounds pretty cool.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: Man.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Imagine being like, hello, how are you suddenly on fire
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: on a piece of paper. Your friend's kind of think
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: you're pretty I literally wrote neat with an exclamation point
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: after that one.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you would also probably be more likely to
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: write butthole or something like that.
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: Then, hey, how are you?
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: That's true? You know that's totally true. Also, I want
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: to take back the word literally. I'm really trying hard
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: to abandon that. Even when it's properly used. It's just
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: so so wrong these days.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: Well, good for you, I think, literally, good for you.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: So what else?
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: Well, that was another experiment. This is so fun. It's
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: called making a fuse.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: That basically all you need to know is like, you know,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: you can you can probably make things that'll blow up.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: So you're gonna need a fuse.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that went really well with the manufacture of
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: colored fire, which was homemade fireworks. It was genuinely and
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: sincerely a flash in a pan because you would put
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: these different metals in and make for you make gunpowder.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: The little kid would make gunpowder and then depending on
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: the chemical or metal that they added, it would burn
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: a different color in a pan as a flash. Genuinely.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you found another some cool research on like
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: just how dangerous some of these chemicals.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Were, right, Oh yeah, let's talk about those.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah. What else? What else was in there?
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: In some of these sets that came out in the
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: twentieth century, there was iodine solution, which sounds kind of innocuous,
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: but they figured out over time that you could use
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: that to make meth with Okay, you could also if
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: you ate two grams of it or more, you would
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: probably die. I think ammonium nitrate was in that, which
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: is frequently used to make bombs.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: What else, Well, one thing you could do that was
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: fun is you could make smoke bombs right with that
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: potassium nitrate, which is I don't know if you mentioned
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: it's also in gunpowder. True, So a lot of these
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: experiments were like watch it flame, spark, or boom in
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: a small way.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Another one used to show up with sodium cyanide, which
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: is more commonly referred to as cyanide, and you would
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: bind two metals like make essentially dissolved gold into water,
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: metals into water. It's pretty neat, that's what it's used for.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: But it's also a rapidly acting toxin that can kill
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: you dead pretty easily. And this was one of those
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: chemicals in the glass vials that arrived in the chemistry
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: sets for kids back then.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and speaking of glass, or even some chemistry sets
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: that had the material and instruction for blowing glass, which
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: is no doubt a super cool, awesome thing to learn,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: but it's you know, it's not something it should be
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: drying in their bedroom.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: No, I mean, it has to get really hot to
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: melt glass enough to blow it. One of my favorites
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: is calcium hypochlorite, which is one of the main ingredients
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: for chlorine gas, which was I think the first chemical
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: weapon to ever be banned by the world. So you
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: could make a chemical weapon in your bedroom if you
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: knew what you were doing.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: And as we're saying, all this, we should point out
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: that these early kits and sets did not offer things
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: like eye protection, like not even a little pair of
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: like fun goggles, you know, like, hey kid, these are
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: cute and fun. You look like a real scientist if
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: you wear these, like just didn't come with them. And
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: the whole thing with you know that we tied it
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: into earlier with magic. A lot of them have like
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: hares or like you know, your science experiments you can do.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: But also here's some just really fun, like sort of
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: literal magic tricks you can do.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Right. There was one that's called the magic handkerchief. And
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: you take a handkerchief and you put I think blue
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: cobalt on it, and as you dry it out, I
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: think it turns white. You're no blue, and you can
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: change it to white magically by it instructs you to
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: ball it up and rub it in your hands for
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: a few minutes. Any magic trick that takes a few
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: minutes of repetitive motion is not a magic trick worth doing.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: But it's what was great is it said, now here's
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: where you have some fun, and then it went on
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: to the next instruction. So these these were really mid
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: century written instruction booklets. That really captured the time. If
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: you think.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: About it, Shall we take a break?
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Oh my, you bet?
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: All right?
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: That was very insure, but we're doing it anyway. We'll
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: be right back.
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: We loss so much stuff from Josh and shuck stuff fui.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: All right, So you're getting these chemistry sets. Another big
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: part of the whole sort of branding thing for these
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: companies making these and this was just sort of big
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: back in those days in the nineteen fifties was.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: Like clubs, like kids clubs.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: So if you got a chemistry set, it was a
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: pretty good chance it would come with like a membership
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: in like a science club, and there could be local
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: chapters that you get together with your friends and things
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: you could mail in for Probably a magazine is involved,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: like a quarterly magazine. Certainly in the case of kim
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Kraft they had the Science Club and the Kimcraft Chemists.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Was there was there rag that they sent out, which
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: was usually just ads for more stuff to buy, but
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: there are they were like kind of fun little stories
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: like where a kid would like save the day through
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: some cool chemistry experiment. Yeah.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: They seem very Mark Trail esque, Yeah, for sure. So
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: in addition to Gilbert was essentially Kimcraft's rival, and Gilbert
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: was the company of Alfred Carlton Gilbert, who had invented
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: the original Erector Set thirteen that originally was debuted as
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: like an engineer's chemistry set. That's what directors were sold
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: as is. But so Gilbert was like, well, let's get
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: into chemistry too, So they came up with a Gilbert
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Chemistry outfit for boys. So the name of the product
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: literally specifies that it's just for boys.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And it had a little astisk and at the
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: very bottom it said must have penis.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: On the label too, Like the picture on the box
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: had a little boy with his shirt sleeves rolled up,
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: wearing a tie doing his chemistry stuff, like an eight
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: year old wearing a tie.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is nineteen twenty. Yeah. Yeah.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: So they found an instruction manual, not from the nineteen
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: twenty edition but from nineteen thirty six, and this one
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: finally did have a warning here and we should read
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: this because this is pretty fun. Gilbert Chemistry sets are
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: not intended for children who cannot read and understand the
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: accompanying instruction books. The sets do not contain dangerous poisons,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: and the chemicals mentioned in this manual are not embraced
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: under the term poisons. They're perfectly safe to use if
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: handled carefully and intelligently. They're not intended to be taken
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: by mouth or swallowed, and no intelligent person would be
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: expected to use them for such purposes. So they're shaming.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: At the same time. It is necessary, however, to emphasize
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: the fact that carelessness on the part of the experimenter
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: can always lead to trouble.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, and if you ever signed up for Disney Plus,
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: you can't sue us if you blow up and burn
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: your house.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: Down, exactly.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: And then they have a few tips at the end,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: like you know, never point the open end of a
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: test tube that you're heating at anybody. Never just put
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: your nose at the end of one while heating to
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: smell it, or put your face with your little face
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: near it.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Yep, exactly. So at least Gilbert's this is the thirties,
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: mid thirties where Gilbert's like, okay, we need to let
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: kids know, like you need to be responsible with this.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: And that was actually I read one of the expectations
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: of chemistry sets in the middle of the twentieth century
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: that it went to a home populated by a boy
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: who had parents that taught that kid responsible stuff, how
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: to be responsible, how to handle chemicals correctly, how to
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: be safe, how to be smart. That that was kind
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: of part and parcel with buying a chemistry set. You
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: a parent, didn't just hand it to your kid and say, like,
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: leave me alone for a while, like you were supposed
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: to be involved, at least initially.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, at least looking over his shoulder with your least
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: pipe in your.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Mouth and knocking on the door and being like still
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: alive in there.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: Right, mom, want you to always knock.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: So we talked a little bit about the sort of
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: sexism involved with all this stuff. Is only marketed to boys.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Pictures of boys literally on the package for boys. In
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: some cases that was just the deal, was like boys
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: were scientists. Girls were not considered for science. That is
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: still a problem. There are so many initiatives these days
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: to get young girls into at a young age, very successfully,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: you know, in a lot of cases, but it's still
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: a challenge to be a woman in the world of science.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: I think we've heard from plenty of listeners who have
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: verified that. But in the nineteen twenties they did the
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Porter Chypical Chemical Company did say, hey, we're some of
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: these things to boys. What about the girls, And they
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: were like, oh, how about Sashet craft the girl's sachet outfit,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: which was chemistry in that it was a way to
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: mix perfumes.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, making flowery smells from aromatic powders.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It was basically a perfum set.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: Right exactly. And they're still in use today. In Who
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Do Love Potions? And I was looking at some of these,
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: and the names of the ones that I could find
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: were confusion, Destroy Everything is one of the potions. Follow
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: me gal was another one.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: No, I'll have that.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: So you want to steer clear of people using who
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Do Love Potions on you because there's no telling what
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: they'll make you do is essentially the thinking behind it.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: But they're made from sashe powders as well, That's why
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: I say that. I don't know if that was clear.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Eventually, in the nineteen sixties, Gilbert finally was like, all right,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: let's make a four girls chemistry set. But even then,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: in the books and stuff, it was like, so you
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: too can become a lab technician. A lab technician, Yeah,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: like not, you know, they weren't encouraging you to reach
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: for the stars and become a scientist.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: No, it was like, so you could learn what you're
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: doing and go assist boy chemists, the real.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: Kind, right, exactly, it's so nuts boo.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: So this was in the sixties. You said that at
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: least chemistry sets for girls came out, even if they
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: were still derogatory. That was the golden era of chemistry sets,
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: the fifties to the sixties. Usually about the early to
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: mid sixties, they say.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: We love a golden age.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was definitely it. And I've seen in
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: multiple places that the reason why this was the golden
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: age of chemistry sets was because this was a time
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: when America in particular was feeling pretty good about science.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Not only had America been the first to come up
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: with the bomb, we were also making things like nylon.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: We were making more durable goods out of plastics, like
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: science was improving people's lives, and at the heart of
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: this was chemistry. So there was a real desire to
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: keep the party going by creating the next generation of chemists,
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: by really going all in onto chemistry sets, and so
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: they started selling even better than they ever had before.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the two slogans changed in the fifties and sixties.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: For Kim Kraft, they changed it to porter Science prepares
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: young America for world leadership, and Gilbert responded in kind
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: with today's adventures in science will create tomorrow's America. And
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: it was this idea. I think even a c. Gilbert
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: the Founder like included a note that said hello boys,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: that said, Hello boys, the need for chemistry is greater
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: now than any point in our country's history. This Gilbert
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Chemistry set may well be the means of launching you
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: on a useful and well paying career. So it was like, Hey,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: this is a toy, but if you're interested in science,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: just wait, because there's a career out there waiting for you.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you like making things catch on fire, wait
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: until they pay you money to make things catch on fire.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: You're gonna really like it. And so things just kind
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: of started to get like anything they could throw at
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: the wall. Because they were selling so many of these,
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: they were willing to try a lot more than just
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: the standard chemistry set. And one of the ones that
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: came out, chuck In I think nineteen fifty is widely considered,
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: at least by some the world's most dangerous toy.
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: It was it bag of glass.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: It was even worse than that, although I don't know
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: at the end of the day, I think bag of
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: glass might be worse.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: That, of of course, was from the great Saturday Night
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Live from the seventies, think dan Ackroyd. But we did,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: or maybe you did, back in the day when we
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: were tasked with doing what are they called, what do
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: we call them image galleries? And you did something on
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: dangerous toys, and I think I remember like this was
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: in there, because I remember we talked about it, either
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: there or in a maybe a podcast or one of
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the videos we used to do about the Atomic energy lab.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it had real uranium in it.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: It did not only did it have four vials of
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: actual uranium or super radioactive uranium or well, I should
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: say actual radioactive uranium ore. There are also three different
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: sources of alpha, beta and gamma particle radiation too, So
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: this box was like quite radioactive. It was a legit,
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: real deal science box. It had a Geiger counter in it,
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: thank god. It had something called the spintherroscope. You could
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: look through it's almost like a seeing eyeglass. Now what
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: are they called like that, like a captain would like
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: pull out the not a telescope.
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: Like a sextant.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: No, it's like the telescope that's small and pocket sized
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: that telescopes into a smaller version of itself.
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: I mean think it's called telescope in it whatever.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: So it's like that, but you can actually watch radioactive
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: isotopes decaying under this thing. There was also a cloud
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: chamber in there, which is really impressive that they had
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: cloud chambers.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, is this the thing you sent? Yes? I did
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: not get a chance to look over this, so feel free.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: Okay. So a cloud chamber is a specific kind of
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: like flask or vial that's set up to hold alcohol
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: vapor that in some way shape or form I guess
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: through magic. You can see the trails of radioactive particles
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: moving through the alcohol vapor, very similar to like a
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: contrail from an airplane, if you believe that those are
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: actually contrails. Yeah, and the particles, the lower, lesser active
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: radioactive particles would kind of zigzag and make little cute lines,
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: but that's because they were actually being slowed down by
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: the alcohol vapor.
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: There.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: Really strong ones would make a nice bold straight line
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: through there, and you could just see all these little
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: trails of radioactive particles show up in your own personal
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: cloud chamber that came in this play set. I know,
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: it was really impressive.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Well, the ones that came with uranium, they had you know, booklets.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: One was called Prospecting for Uranium that taught you how
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: to mine a radioactive or so you're thinking, like all right,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: like how literally how dangerous was this? There have been
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: modern calculations about, you know, what was contained in these boxes,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: and suppose that the amount of radiation from the uranium
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: in one of these sets equaled about a day of
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: UV exposure from the sun. So it's not the most
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: dangerous thing in the world, but it is pretty funny
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: that it came with like actual uranium, right.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: I couldn't find an answer though, like over what period
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: of time was it day's worth of UV exposure? Like
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: an hour if you spent the day with this thing,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Like I couldn't quite nail it down. But I'm from
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: the context that everybody describes it, and it sounds fairly harmless.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's exposure, but like what if it's on
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: your skin or gets in your body somehow, your your.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: Teeth, it can't be good.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: So I saw that they only sold about five thousand
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: of them, and that it wasn't There's a great Atlas
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Obscure video on this where they talked to a curator
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: at a science museum who opens one of these and
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: just talks about it, and she said that they were
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: discontinued after two years, not because of safety concerns, but
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: because they didn't sell very many. Because it was about
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: five hundred or something dollars in today's money for these things,
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: so most parents weren't like, sure, I'll buy you this,
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: you know, atomic lab for five hundred bucks.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And here's the thing, it was just kind of fun.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: We won't read through all these quotes, but a lot
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: of you know, legit Nobel winning chemistry chemists over the
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: years got their start in chemistry sets. I imagine a
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: lot of real deal scientists and chemists had these things
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: when they were kids. And we'll read one from Oliver Sacks,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: the neurologist and author, said, I do not think there
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: can be any adequate substitute for having a chemistry set
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: or a little chemistry lab and doing experiments oneself, thinking
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: them out, taking responsibility for them, and occasionally facing risks too.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: So Oliver Sacks talking about risk was one of the
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: big sort of cells of chemistry sets for kids, like
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: a little bit of danger involved. You know, they were
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: fun and all, but I think it was that little
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: bit of like, you know, you are making fire, you
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: are making things go boom or smoke. That was one
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: of the things that appealed to kids and probably still does, yeah.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: For sure. And the problem is is that over time,
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: so like kids who were like, I'm really into this
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: and I need to learn to be a responsible chemists
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: because I want to grow up to be a chemist.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: Over like, there were also kids that got these that
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: were not that interested in being a chemist. They just
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: wanted to blow things up. And then I think also
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: there were kids who were responsible but just had accidents,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: and so there were reports of people burning down their
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: family house with these chemistry sets are injuring themselves. And
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: that kind of coincided with a couple of things. One
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: this increasing interest in protecting kids from toys, and then
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: two also a greater emphasis on things like environmental pollutants
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: and toxins, and that whole like love of chemistry that
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: really carried everybody in the fifties and early sixties was
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: starting to be questioned and like, exactly where these chemicals
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: doing to us? So you put those two things combined,
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: and chemistry sets started.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: To take a hit, Yeah for sure.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: In sixty six, Congress passed the Child Protection Act, which
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: you know, all of a sudden you could ban a
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: toy that had something dangerous or hazardous in there. A
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: couple of years later, the US Department of Health, Education,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: and Welfare they estimated that toys, just all toys, caused
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: about seven hundred thousand injuries a year. So more regulations
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: were passed in the late sixties and early seventies seventies
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: for like you said, just protecting kids from dangers and
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: toys and what these toys were made of, in the
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: case of chemistry sets, like the chemicals that were in there.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, like this increasing concern among parents and what
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: are in these chemistry sets led to decline in sales,
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: and in fact, Porter Chemical and Gilbert the two rivals
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: who've made Chemcraft and Gilbert Chemistry sets, were bought by
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: a toy maker named Gabriel Toys. You might recognize that
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: name from Othello Trouble. The pottery craft activity, a little
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: set where you could make your own pottery You remember
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: that it was this little pottery wheel.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: And probably remember the box.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: You can you definitely would, but you could recreate that
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: scene from Ghost.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: But for cheap Yeah, yeah, as a teenager too.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: Anyway, Gabriel they bought those two in nineteen sixty seven,
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: and by the eighties they were like, no chemistry set.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: You just couldn't sell them. Some companies went on like, no,
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: we're going to keep the flame going, but they really
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: really watered them down starting in the eighties and nineties.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, and that I mean, I guess my
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: brother would have had one probably from the seventies, so
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: it may have still been a little bit legit. But yeah,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: in the eighties they started literally watering them down, watering
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: down the chemicals. Things you know, became plastic, like you
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: didn't get glass test tubes and metal scales and stuff
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: like that anymore. Like you know, the old kids were
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: just sort of smaller condensed versions of like the real deal,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: and that all changed. They just became cheaper, kind of
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: like everything else. I think in two thousand and one
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: there was a recall of a set called Professor Wacko's
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Exothermic Exuberance that had glycerine and potassium.
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: What is that work?
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: Manging it?
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, great, and that could cause things to catch
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: on fire and spontaneously combust. These these this particular kid
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: had containers with removable lids, but they weren't labeled, so
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: kids were mislabeling things or just getting them confused basically
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: because there were no labels. And there were two separate
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: house fire incidents. So that one was recalled and that
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: was I mean that was in the early two thousands.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: It was surprising those were still around.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think those people try to throw back to
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: like the real deal and it just didn't quite work.
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: There was another one that's YESI Fingerprinting Examination Kit, which
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: sounds extremely innocuous, but it was recalled in two thousand
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: and seven because they found out that the fingerprint powder
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: that you used to dust for prints with had asbestos
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: in it. It was up to five percent asbestos, which
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: is obviously I think a mesothelioma causing carcinogen. Yeah, so
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: that was like no, and parents were like, what are
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: you guys doing. Stop selling our kids, Like, we're clearly
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: into products safety, Stop selling our kids this stuff. So
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: a toymaker named oh, I don't know who made it,
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: but they came out with a set called Chemistry sixty
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: and they were like, watch this. This is sixty fun
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: activities with no chemicals.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: In other words, boring this. This is the irony here.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Despite that it had no chemicals, it had two kinds
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: of safety goggles, the goggles and those little clear safety
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: glasses made out of whatever they're made out of, the
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: chat non chat or something.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: And to fold it up, nanny who came out of
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: the box to hover while all of these experiments are
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: going on, and you could get the items that you needed,
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: Like you did need some chemicals, but these are like
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: kitchen level chemicals like vinegar, baking, soda, that kind of stuff.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: And I thought that was kind of reminiscent. Remember, Dave
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: came up with a bunch of quotes of Nobel scientists
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: who credit chemistry sets for like increasing their or starting
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: their interest in science. There was one other scientist named
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Kerrie Mullis who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: ninety three, who said that their objective with their chemistry
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: set was to figure out what things I might put
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: together to cause an explosion, and that they discovered whatever
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: chemicals might be missing, they could buy them at the
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: local drug store or hardware store, and so like that's
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: this is like the antithesis of that, Rather than being
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: like I need more explosive stuff or I need this
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: other thing to make this explosion happen. I'm going to
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: go down to the drug store hardware store.
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: This was.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go to the kitchen and make a
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: baking soda and vinegar volcano in this chemistry set that
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: my parents bought me, and then I'm going to go
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: to sleep and maybe hopefully never wake up.
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Dave did a little research, though, and found that there
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: are some pretty good ones today that you can still get.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: There are some companies that are, you know, trying to
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: make a safe version of a real deal chemistry set
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: these days. This one called I don't know, it's TIMS
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: or Themes in this case, and Cosmos with a K.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: It's called the kim C three thousand, two hundred and
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: eighty bucks plus money for chemicals, So it better be
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: good for that kind of dough.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It got best overall Chemistry set by the Wall
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: Street Journal in two thousand and six. I didn't know
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: the Wall Street Journal rated such things.
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: But it makes steen years ago.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: It does make sense that they would rate it though,
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: because these some of the legit chemistry sets sold today. Therefore,
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: like homeschoolers like, who need this kind of stuff? And
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: in fact, if you want to plunk down six hundred
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: and forty five simoleans, you can get a chemistry set
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: that covers an entire year of eleventh grade chemistry. Oh wow,
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: pretty neat. I also saw one other reason that chemistry
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: sets kind of got watered down over the years are
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: meth labs. People were finding like they could actually buy
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: these things and use them to make meth. Right, So
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: there was another there was another prong to like be like,
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: we need to really stop making these legit chemistry sets. Yeah,
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: got anything else?
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: I got nothing else?
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: You know, support support science for your for your kids,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: little little girls, little boys, get them, get them a
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: chemistry set.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: Very nice, That's what I say.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: That's right. Since Chuck gave us a nice PSA, it's
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: time of course for a listener, mate.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: I'm going to call this all caught up. Hey, everybody
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: got hooked on your show. In twenty nineteen, after a
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: few weeks of listening, I decided I had to listen
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: to all of it, and after five years, I finally
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: have completed that task. Just finished listening to the Judas
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: Priest suicide trial during a morning trail run, and now
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: I feel like I have a little void in my life.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: You guys having to wait patiently throughout the week for
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: new content. I often listen for hours on end during
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: trail runs training for ultra marathons. By the way, Josh
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: has many times called them ultrathons, which never fails to
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: give me a chuckle.
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: Ultrathon is that another thing?
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: I think they're called ultra marathons. Ultrathon is like a
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: bad guy on in a character Yeah, and some Japanese anime.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I like ultrathon.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Your voices and content, guys, always give me keep me
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: in a positive mood, even when I'm at the point
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: of exhaustion. You've been with me and my wife through
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: some big life events, our marriage, multiple cross country moves,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: new jobs.
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: And now a new baby in a few weeks.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: And by the time this comes out, that baby will
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: be around, I would imagine, because we're ahead by a
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: few weeks at this point.
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: So keep up the great work, guys.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: I can continue to share this and enjoy it with
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: my family as it grows by one. Maybe a long shot,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: but I'd love to see a live show up here
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: in Halifax, Nova Scotia. That you get a couple one
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: hundred people in a room here, that's for Matt. Well, Matt,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: we got a couple of hundred people in a room
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: in Atlanta.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we can't get worse than that, right.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd rather go to Halifax than have a hometown
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: show be under sold.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you got any barns in Halifax, Matt. That we
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: can do is.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: Showing that Bet Matt has a barn.
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: Well. Congratulations in advance retroactively to you and your family
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: for your baby's birth. And if you want to get
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: in touch with us like Matt did and tell us
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: how much we've kept you going on your ultrathons, you
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: can do so by sending us an email to Stuff
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.