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Teach Chemistry to kids?

casebro

Penultimate Amazing
casebro
Joined
Jun 14, 2005
Messages
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Building blocks would be cool, even just carbon, hydrogen, oxygen.

My 7 year old homeschool grandniece was asking about 'chemicals', and it seemed a good moment to explain how bonds hold molecules together. Sure wish I could remember my high school chemistry from 45 years ago.

I just ebayed a 300 page texty book, "Chemistry made simple", $4.

I often see colored balls as building blocks, linked into molecules. But no luck on ebay. Any better nomenclature to search for?

The kid will be a genius, Mommy and Daddy both lawyers. But pretty Christian. I'd like to wedge some science into the kid's lives. Four kids, this is the oldest.
 
Marshmallows and straws. Food coloring for different elements maybe"?

That way you can dispose of the evidence that you are teaching the dark arts to a seven year old.
 
casebro said:
I often see colored balls as building blocks, linked into molecules. But no luck on ebay. Any better nomenclature to search for?
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Molecule model kit or molecular model kit seem to be the phrases that get a lot of Google hits, including companies selling them. I can't access eBay at work, so I don't know how well they work there.
 
bobdroege7 said:
Marshmallows and straws. Food coloring for different elements maybe"?

That way you can dispose of the evidence that you are teaching the dark arts to a seven year old.
Click to expand...

I used fruit pastilles and cocktail sticks to get the hang of isomers.
 
casebro said:
Building blocks would be cool, even just carbon, hydrogen, oxygen.

My 7 year old homeschool grandniece was asking about 'chemicals', and it seemed a good moment to explain how bonds hold molecules together. Sure wish I could remember my high school chemistry from 45 years ago.

I just ebayed a 300 page texty book, "Chemistry made simple", $4.

I often see colored balls as building blocks, linked into molecules. But no luck on ebay. Any better nomenclature to search for?

The kid will be a genius, Mommy and Daddy both lawyers. But pretty Christian. I'd like to wedge some science into the kid's lives. Four kids, this is the oldest.
Click to expand...

Start 'em out with sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate (under your supervision of course)
 
casebro said:
Building blocks would be cool, even just carbon, hydrogen, oxygen.

My 7 year old homeschool grandniece was asking about 'chemicals', and it seemed a good moment to explain how bonds hold molecules together. Sure wish I could remember my high school chemistry from 45 years ago.

I just ebayed a 300 page texty book, "Chemistry made simple", $4.

I often see colored balls as building blocks, linked into molecules. But no luck on ebay. Any better nomenclature to search for?

The kid will be a genius, Mommy and Daddy both lawyers. But pretty Christian. I'd like to wedge some science into the kid's lives. Four kids, this is the oldest.
Click to expand...

Those kits you have seen are probably organic molecular modelling kits ("Molecular Model Kits" on eBay). So, worth noting, they are just for organic chemistry. I'd go for the biggest kit, so you can model just about anything.

Inorganic kits are much harder to find, but they're out there. eg: if you want to visualize the difference between hexavalent chromium versus benign chromium compounds.

I think this is a great idea, btw. My kids really did enjoy my old kits from university. Sort of like legos. Which also means they were scattered everywhere and still turn up in the vacuum twenty years later.


ETA: In contrast... chemistry kits with jars of chemicals were a bit of a dud. I had one when I was a kid, and remember the same thing. It didn't captivate my interest, and until they're highschool age, i'm not sure they will actually absorb any real knowledge. Plus: chemistry sets require immediate knowledgeable supervision, so if the parents aren't into it, it will not be used, or will be used unsafely.
 
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Armitage72 said:
Molecule model kit or molecular model kit seem to be the phrases that get a lot of Google hits, including companies selling them. I can't access eBay at work, so I don't know how well they work there.
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Excellent!

Who'da thunk molecules had anything to do with chemistry? :D

68 listed on eBay. $12 kit from China, plus the $4 book.

Teach them young, expose them to everything is my motto. My bros and I gave one niece her first anatomy lesson while cleaning fish- at 3 years old. She graduates med school in May. But the grand niece in question today is from a supposedly vegetarian family. I don't think killing a fish is in their syllabus. Weeeeel, ovo-lacto-piscatarians.... Maybe I'll stop by the Chinese fish store on the way down next time...
 
John Jones said:
Google 'Iodine Clock'. That made me gasp when I saw it the first time in college.
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Probably too complex for my assets on hand.

But I do have a dropper of iodine. Formerly used for first aid, but it acts as a starch detector for home brewing. Starch turns it black, no starch it remains red, enzyme action is done. It's what those pens do to paper money, counterfeiters starch cheap paper to get the right feel. Red ink is good, no starch. You can spray starch some bills to mess with the clerks.

Baking soda and vinegar could be good too.

More fun is aluminum foil, lye, and a condom to make an explosive hydrogen balloon...nah, not for 7 year olds. Caustic, hot, and the Forbidden Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
 
casebro said:
But I do have a dropper of iodine. Formerly used for first aid, but it acts as a starch detector for home brewing. Starch turns it black, no starch it remains red, enzyme action is done. It's what those pens do to paper money, counterfeiters starch cheap paper to get the right feel. Red ink is good, no starch. You can spray starch some bills to mess with the clerks.
Click to expand...


An experiment that I remember from early school was to apply iodine to a piece of bread, watching it turn black. Then you chew another piece of bread until it's soggy, apply iodine, and nothing happens. It was part of a lesson about the enzymes in saliva breaking down starch into simple sugars prior to digestion.
 
Ok..... To really entertain smalls (and up), Buy a head of red cabbage, rough cut or tear it up in a nice bowl. Heat to boiling a quart or two of water. Put the read cabbage into the boiling water and cook for 8-10 minutes. Remove from stove, let the solution cool until you can safely touch it with a finger. Pour the mix through a sieve (to get out the cabbage stuff) into a container. If you desire, eat the cabbage with a good corn beef. Pour the fluid in a bottle that seals pretty well. Refrigerate for longer life.

Now the fun!!! Make random solutions of things (lemon juice, milk, battery acid, soda, salt, baking soda, vinegar, aspirin, very etc.) and add a few drops of the liquid we produced. Neutral items will stay purplish-red, acids and bases will change color to different degrees. This is essentially homemade indicator solution. If not kept cold - best in small dropper bottles with dropper top- it will start stinking due to the organics in it. Very fun though and I've used it for from kindergarten to high school and random adults. So far all found it entertaining.
 
Lewis may be a little much/intense for the smalls. By high school it will become useful for passing Chemistry tests and related. Especially AP Chem!!!
 
If you want to expand on Fuelair's experiment with the cabbage, a lot of flowers contain a similar pH indicator as the one in cabbage. Easy to extract (simmer flowers in a 10% alcohol solution which you could make from cheap vodka) and then it is possible to compare the colours and pH points of various flowers.

Its also a nice way to show that red cabbage IS a flower and do some introductionary genetics/divergent evolution.
 
Another chemistry experiment that goes down well with children is to make home-made ginger beer. With A-level students, of course, you can make actual beer or alcoholic ginger beer.

There are several commercial kits available, and you can brew both non-alcoholic ginger beer, and alcoholic ginger beer. To do home-brewing properly, you do have buy a bit of kit first (i.e. fermenters, and airlocks, and siphons, and of course the worts). When you eventually seal the bottle, you add a teaspoon or so of sugar, which the yeast ferments to carbon dioxide, and thus carbonates the drink. All of these are good practical demonstrations of chemistry, and there is a good pay-off at the end.

You usually get very good soft drinks, and alcoholic drinks with these home brew kits, provided that you let the brew get a bit of bottle age, i.e. wait a couple of weeks.
 
+1 for practical experiments. Chemistry never took off for me until I realized I could do stuff - create and modify the world. That's the empowering part, the concrete part that pulls all the abstract along with it - you learn the formulas and the math so you can make things happen. Which, by the way, was the same motivation for learning computer programming.
 
I would suggest making nitroglycerin, but it might give people heart attacks so I won't. I got a college chemistry book long years ago from the 1920's and it had a couple of chapters on interesting things like that from WW1 tech.
 
fuelair said:
I would suggest making nitroglycerin, but it might give people heart attacks so I won't. I got a college chemistry book long years ago from the 1920's and it had a couple of chapters on interesting things like that from WW1 tech.
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Fireworks and the like are an excellent playground for budding chemists. Plenty to learn in inorganic chemistry and when you add binders and the like, there's a natural segue into physical chemistry too.

I picked up triangle diagrams, ball milling, and the wonders of a "sweetie barrel" from fireworks.
 
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