How Did You get Started in Chemistry?

i still need of a lot of chem. infos... i just joined in this forum because is really a democratic thing to discussion of ALL of chemistry, including some things which are often forbiden by law as explosives,etc..

" how did you get started?"
well, i'm still a tennager... i'm tempted to chemistry world because some extraordinary and weirds reactions,mainly from "energetic materials" starting with 8 years old..
now i have 17 and still in polytechnique ensine(minning course) ,but still wait hopefully for my chemical engineering or industrial chemistry diploma..then much after,some more education (and PhD !!), i wish will work with researches of explosives, or similar..
unfortunately my country does not stimulate the education of peoples(as you can see from my primitive language ), so the major part of people is keep in ignorance ... i think which maybe the war still comes here... (amazonia, "biotreasure" ,large area, WATER, etc..)...

When very young(grade3?), I got obsessed with caps(the things for capguns) I would love just sitting there popping one at a time listening for the bang. Tried to build a rocket out of caps, the ducttape just smoldered and the caps popped one by one. Got model rocket engines, putting them in anything with wheels.

I remember is reading a kids book on nitrogen, around grade 5 or so. This book gave the ratios for gunpowder, and after that I reread that book at least a dozen times. I was hooked. No idea why I read that book in the first place though. From there I proceeded to read every chemistry book in the public library over the next year. Only a few shelves of them, and most were intended for kids except a few uni level texts which I absolutly loved. I even stole one from the library. Now my parents were kind of supportive at the time, but they would push me towards the novels instead of textbooks when at the library. They let me purchase a chemistry set at some point in grade 6, I got the biggest, most expensive one possible. It was a chemcraft or skillcraft brand set. Once I got it and read the experiments and looked at the chemicals, I cried, seriously. I remember the adrenaline going through me while reading each label, hoping each time for KNO3, KNO3 which never came. It was all slime, colour changes, and a bunch of white precipitates. I did a few experiments to please my parents, and promply forgot about the horrid set.

My father at some point hereafter told me of his exploits of making gunpowder as a child, and how he could buy everything needed at the drugstore, but now they no longer carried such things. I believe I cursed the government for the first time at the tender age of 12.

And again a few years later I was majorly setback when I recieved a scientific supply catalog, but they would not sell to me. I read the chemistry section many a time as bedtime reading, which in a way ws depressing as they would not sell to me.
I got my parents to take me to every antique store in town, and I scoured each one looking for a can of saltpeter and sulfur. I eventualy found a antique store with both(and another very old chemistry set, which to this day I regret not buying) I paid around 20$ for~50g of KNO3 and ~10g of sulfur.
Around grade 7 or 8 I finally got around to making some horrible gunpowder, by volume, and with very coarse chemicals. It just smouldered a little. I stopped experimenting for a while, but kept reading. Around grade 9 or 10 I was linked to a website by a friend, which I am too ashamed of to disclose, that discussed OTC sources, however only for making explosives. I tried a few explosive compounds, finally made good gunpowder, and wanted more than bangs, so I used the meagre OTC chemicals I had collected to do what little I could in the textbooks. I enjoyed the electrolysis of water and the 'pop test' to no end. I played around with general chemistry experiments for a while, most which did not work as the reactions in texts rarely give conditions. So I turned to energetics once again as there was so much info on the internet(on the god-awful TO...er...website), and this way my experiments would work! Usually made and then destroyed without detonation though, as I liked the chemistry procedure more than the end product's uses.

High school I went through a bit of a pure pyrotechnics phase for a year or two, as there was so much info on the internet. I still read chemistry though, and aced all my science courses without much work(english was another matter). My highschool never had a science fair, despite being one of the largest around. That annoyed me to no end. Won a couple of chemistry test-contests. Grade 12 they let me play in the lab. Never did let me use chlorine gas as I very much wanted to make SnCl4. Chemistry labs bored me, despite the fact that I looked forward to them very very much. Lots of Calorimetry and titrations. I had my own desiganted fume hood and could come and go as I pleased. Got a weird reputation, something between uber-nerd, and the energetics stuff just scared them. The chem teachers came to me for info in such areas. I once wrote a poem on nitroglycerin. I am sure higher ups heard about that...

Oh and most importantly....grade 10 or 11...I discovered this site! Dropped pyrotechnics, and lurked for quite some time, because everyone was so advanced and was afraid my lack of knowledge would make me look stupid. (I also had issuses with social skills). Finally joined and just played sponge on all the info here. Slowly put together a proper lab, by the end of grade 12 I was decently well setup. University came, and now I am pursuing an honours chemistry degree, going pretty well so far. I do research in the summer in professor's labs, and during the year in my own. Really I don't think my interest in chemistry would have progressed much if it hadent have been for this site.

Está tudo Ótimo , bem mesmo. (something as "is all OK, even good." )
eheheh i'm not live in Amazonia,but the most part of these pass through of Brazil north. i live in Brazil inland. (also most of portuguese and spanish words are very alike..)and i also trying speak other languages as dead latim, new esperanto, germany (some chem. documents in germany are also really good!),etc, but only spell horribly some words and i still have problems with english...

is a very good start... knowleding this acid base foaming reaction i many years ago "sabotaged" the soda lemon which my brother finishes made..ehehe

[Editado em 5-1-2007 por Aqua_Fortis_100%]

Ahahahah! I must admit, that is exactly where I started. Making good old sodium acetate solution! At the young age of 10 or so, I also made copper acetate solution without realizing it...was trying to clean pennies in vinegar and NaCl solution and in a week it turned blue I then worked my interest up in a backwards sort of way. I am a "craft" addict. I love to know how to do everything to some degree. I learned about dyeing yarn (good old mordants like potassium alum, copper sulfate, iron sulfate, stannous chloride, tannic acid, oxalic acid, and others to make the colors string, bright, and in some cases form at all) i had a small fixation with what is essentially iron-gall ink. Add a tiny amount of tannic acid to a very dilute iron sulfate solution (I was using improvised iron acetate and tannic acid from boiled oak bark and acorns) and the entire mix turns intensely black as ferric tannate ppts and stays fairly well in suspension. Can throw on the potters wheel and learned some crude glaze chemistry. I know wild edible plants and medicinal wild plants and their active compounds backwards and fowards. Then came soapmaking which is much more chemical than anything I'd done before and into which I could blend knowledge from dyeing and "herbalism (I wont say homeopathy because it wasn't that)" Then I met this pyro kid in college (but hes not too chemically inclined) and started by disassembling batteries for MnO2 which I thought at the time would be an interesting experiment to turn it into permanganate. Aside from reading how hard it would be, I found this site and chem became an addiction. I had gone into school as a Chem engineer and joined the Chem-E car club which long story short involved me helping with building a wet cell battey with CuS04 electrolyte and a CuSO4/NaOH titration control system for the vehicle.

I always wanted to make "bombs" and after finding how to on the internet I made some, I was 16 then. Making them made my interest for other chemistry grow, so I started doing some experiments like making acetamide and things like that. When I was going to some guy to buy some glass, he asked me if I wanted to buy most of his chemicals for a very resonable price I was hooked. My dad and I build a fume hood, and because my dad has it's own company I can by chemicals from large company's. Now at the ages of 18 I'm doing grignards And I have been guest on the organic-lab of the group "Biosyn" from the university of Leiden for about 40 hours now.

It was actually the quest to get rich making meth that turned me onto chemistry in the first place.

I didn't know any damn thing about chemistry. Zip, zilch zero. I thought meth came from recipes (mix ingredient A with ingredient B, and presto, your rich). Hell law enforcement propaganda made it look like a cakewalk.

Boy was I freaking wrong, and nearly 3 years later still haven't made a batch. (Thats mainly due to lack the personal refusal of using pseudoephedrine as a starting material, lack of $$$$ to get equipment and precursors for P2P production). It always seems like there is always some precursor or bit of glassware or apparatus you need to get the job done.

But anyways, if I don't succeed in my quest I will have learned a whole heck of a lot and managed to aquire a very nice chemistry set that would leave any law enforcement officer's jaw sitting on the floor if they saw it.

It might also lead to me getting a degree in organic chemistry or chemical engineering because of what I've learned. Just on a whim, a month or so ago I looked at a friends first year college chemistry book and all I could do is laugh to myself thinking, "this stuff is a freaking joke". I bet I've pulled off reactions in my garage that would give most college professors nightmares.

This year hopefully things will get better... I'm going to try to complete my vacuum source and add an inline reef chiller for working with low boiling solvents and branch out into some other legit forms of the art such as perfumary, agricultural chemicals, and biofuels.

I have been interested in science ever since I was born. When I was about six I told my mother to read science related books for bedtime stories. I also saw the movie "Back to the future" and that totally blew my mind. I started drawing all kind of mechaincal and electical stuff. Other movie that has had a great impact on my life was The Nutty Professor. When I saw those colored liquids and mysterous fumes I thought that that is my thing for good.

The time I was seven I had mixed my first baking soda-vinegar cocatail. I managed to get some test tubes and the whole thing got bigger. The time I was eight I had bought some very basic chemicals from pharmacy with my parents. Limestone, Citric acid, Cupric sulphate etc. The time I was nine I started to become more interested in computers. Programming was my thing and I could sit in front of the computer writing simple GWBasic programs for hours. I forgot chemistry for some time. At the time I also red a lots of math and basic physics.

When my first chemistry lessons started in junior high (grades 7-9 here in Finland) I was very exited. Seeing all those beakers, tripods, ring stands and fume hoods was something whole new for me. It opened my eyes again for chemistry and after that I really got into it. I started gathering more chemicals, glassware and hardware. It has been quite a long way but I have managed to gather quite formal lab for different kinds of experiments.

Science has always been and I hope that it will always be close to my heart

10 Cent Sugar rockets

I got started in the 70's making the 10 cent sugar rocket.
Potassium Nitrate and powdered sugar.

Fireworks

Along with roll caps, flares, and rockets. My parents gave me a couple of those Gilbert
chemistry sets. The_Davster, ever tape an Estes rocket motor to a matchbox car ?
That's what I did to my younger brother's matchbox collection when his hyperactive
ass would piss me off ! Funny as shit watching those things do loops in the air !

When I was about 7 I got my first chemistry set from my mother and father. I was fascinated by it. I set up lab in my brothers abandoned bedroom (he was in the Navy) and performed every experiment.

About a year later my dad died and I didn't experiment much for the next 6 or 7 years. He was always the one that would encourage me to go the next step.

One day at the age of 16 or 17 I stumbled across a collection of interesting pyrex glassware. The set contained beakers, flasks, a ring stand, and other items. I was immediately drawn in by the mystery of experimenting again. I honestly don't remember where I found this glassware but it was beautiful.

A good friend of mine was very good with wood working so I asked him to help me construct a lab bench in my basement. The house that I lived in was well over a 100 years old and the basement reminded me of something out of a horror movie. It was the perfect setting.

Mom was an english teacher at my high school and I was friends with my chemistry teacher. He would provide me with interesting chems to play with after school. Never anything too dangerous. I obtained HCl at a supply store and my chemistry teacher have me a bottle of Zinc. I bet over the course of the next year or so I created enough hydrogen to float the hindenberg.

My lab was also a great place to smoke cigarettes without my mother knowing about it.

About this time I also found a great like for fermented solutions. I also had the most basic distilling setup and would "purify" some of the mother's hooch for further research. I remember that my condenser was broken but it worked for simple stuff.

When I was 18 my mom died. I was active duty Amry and when I came home after Basic Training it was obvious that she wasn't going to live much longer... Sure enough within 4 months she passed away. I was stationed in Germany and came home for emergency leave to spend her last days with her. During this time I packed my lab (it had gotten rather impressive) only to never see it again.

It's 23 years later and I'm building a lab to enjoy for myself and with my son now.

Thanks,
Joe

[Edited on 7-1-2007 by joeflsts]

well my Mother was good for this, I had access to Microscopes, encyclopedias, minerals, and plants.
my Grandfather (mothers side) was into fixing things, Electrical, mechanical and was also in the War.

I learned plenty from these, and also got into plenty of trouble when left in my own time and bored.
I`de built my 1`st radio at the age of 6, and assumed others kids were the same when I went to school, I was wrong
I Used to spend plenty of time After school in the library reading up on All parts of science that I could get my hands on, it also was a great way of escaping being beaten up outside after school (the grunts couldn`t spell library never mind think about entering there).

then I had my 1`st official Science lesson, I fell in love with it from the start, I`de see the teacher after school many times with different stones and minerals I`de find, take in my electronic projects etc...
I walked away with plenty wins at science fairs too.
the Periodic table was a total mystery to me, something I needed to solve and crack, WHAT did it all mean?

I`m 40, and I`m still enjoying finding out

When I was very young (8 or so) I new about making CO2 from baking soda and vinegar but it never stimulated my imagination or did anything to spark my interest in chemistry. Up until about age 12 I was into wilderness survival--it had more possibilities, I thought. Tree forts, exploration, simple booby traps made with kite string (for intruders) And, of course, fire-making! Long hours were spent rubbing sticks together or charing wood with a magnifying glass. Then, I read My Side of the Mountain and became obsessed with flint and steel. That year, for Christmas, my parents bought me one of those firestarter blocks with the flint rod embedded in the magnesium. It was a great tool but I remember being disappointed that it was 95% magnesium with only a small flint insert. After all, it was the flint that captured my imagination and if I wanted to use "high-tech" stuff I would just use matches!
As it turned out, it was the magnesium firestarter that got me into chemistry. While demonstrating my new tool for a family friend he mentioned in passing that if I were to add a shaving of magnesium to some vinegar it would bubble. Of course I figured this was just another way of making CO2 with vinegar. ***boring*** Then he told me that the gas was hydrogen. Suddenly, chemistry became interesting. "Why was it hydrogen?" I asked. To which he replied something about acetic acid and metals blah blah blah. I didn't understand a word of it but it had so aroused my curiousity that I became determined to find out.

The rest is history.

[Edited on 26-1-2007 by Levi]

getting started

Should have done this sooner...

I have to admit, reading this thread makes me all warm and fuzzy inside thinking about how I got started.

I got a few of those cheapass chemistry kits as a kid. I, as many others, started with the wonderful sodium acetate preparation. Most specifically I remember mixing the vinegar and baking soda and using the CO2 to put out a candle. I could not get enough of that. Might also where I got my fire fascination. That or my house burning down (of which I had nothing to do with ) I always loved math, and math loved me. I demolished everyone in my school with math. Completed those 100 question time tests in about 2 minutes with perfect answers and such. Got on math teams and stuff in middle school. My grades suffered in middle school because I really didn't care and I was bored out of my mind.

Around the age of 11 I got a fascination with fireworks and energetic materials. I will be the first to admit, I started off as a kewl. Reading the ACB amongst other pieces of questionable literature. I read everything I could for 2 or 3 years. I attempted acetone peroxide once in that time, and thankfully it didn't work. Late 2000 or early 2001 I found RogueSci and lurked for a while. I was finally ready to register and the site was down. I eventually figured out it was because I was using AOL. There was some downtime in there too.

Now high school was a totally different story. I was so excited to be there and actually learning stuff I ate it up. Science and math I specifically dominated. English and spanish were my downfall from a 4.0. I did a lot of academic extra curriculars, graduated with more credits than theoretically possible. I competed in a lot of science competitions. State champion of chemistry a few times through various competitions. Qualified for National level Chemistry Olympiad twice, was always a few points from going to the top 20 selection thing at Cheyene Mountain. Through the science competition I accidentally found out where Madscientist was from, and started talking with him a bit.

Somewhere in high school I found a few new forums, such as the hive and this one, registered about 4 years ago after lurking for a year. I also started posting on this site called Xinventions. This is where my science knowledge really took off. It wasn't because I learned a lot, it was just the atmosphere. I came in and was already one of the better posters in terms of knowledge and such. This made me feel great about myself, and made me want to learn more. The more I learned the more I shared, and the more I wanted to learn, and it worked out well I would say. Xinventions became what is now apcforum.net of which I am an administrator of. This is where I have been lately. My interest in chemistry is picking back up though.

College I can unfortunatly say did not go as well as high school. I just lost my edge. I am beginning to think I made a poor decision going to school where I did. The kids are more interested in grades than actually learning which I feel is unfortunate. I could give a shit about my grades, I want to learn as much as I can. Unfortunatly that isn't how it works, and my grades are mediocre. I'd love to go to pharmacy school, but my grades arn't good enough. Said grades prevent me from getting any undergraduate research, despite my brightness. I have a few options I want to explore, but I don't know. I am completely burnt out on school and it has become a signifigant chore for me. Just no drive to do anything anymore, even learning chemistry which used to keep me up for days.

I remember the first experiment I tried as a young child: tried to make "dry ice" by taking ice cubes from the freezer and rubbing them vigorously with a towel. I thought that if I could just dry them off, the cubes would magically turn into dry ice!

Wow, I feel so young looking at all these posts about the 60s and 70s. I just got interested in chemistry last year (junior year of High School) because of the AP Chem class I was taking. But hey, it was enough to help me decide what my college major is going to be (organic chem). Too bad they didn't have any follow-up classes, like say, maybe AP Organic Chemistry. Had to buy all my books and equipment myself ($2000 is a lot for a high school kid to be spending on science stuff). But hey, next year at school i'll have access to all the lab equipment i'll ever need

LOL I wish I could tell when I got into chemistry but I can remeber my family telling me to stay away from the chemicals under the sink not because they thought I would poision my self but because they where afraid I was going to blow something up......again.

About nine or ten years old my mother brought home some damn near brand new collage organic chem books from an auction and ever since then Its been an addiction.I read all 9 of them over and over and still read them to this day.

If it wasnt for getting kicked out of high school twice I would probly already have my degree in chemistry.

Well when I was young I was one who liked to keep things, I would go to garage sales often and find lots of things. One day our new neighbor had moved in and while I was riding my bike around I saw her throwing out some books. Before she did I stopped her and she had about 5 decent condition chem books. I asked her if I could keep them and she said yes. She was a chemistry teacher for the local high school and worked at the local laboratory for biological research. Later she had a house warming party and I saw her basement and she had a full set up lab I was amazed. Naturally I had researched chemistry online and in the books. I recognized a variety of condensers, burettes, flasks, lab stands and TONS of chemicals.

Then I went down the road of EM and the like. I had obtained some ammonium nitrate and hydrogen peroxide from parent's work place. My neighbor wouldn't give me anything like that. I had fun with rockets and such.

Since then I had researched chemistry on my own and sometimes I borrowed from her. Later for high school I went to a Catholic high school who's chemistry program is mostly analytical and physical due to their religious beliefs I am currently a freshman in high school but I am at the top of my class with 95 and above in every class. I have become friends with the chemistry teacher and learned that he himself enjoys the actual chemistry experiments and such like I do and is not to fond of the chemistry they teach at the school I am still studying chemistry and plan to take AP next year because I have talked with some of the 10th graders who take it and I already know most of what they are doing.

Hmm...

Stream of consciousness bs alert!

It's strange, but I have no youthful background of blowing up the garage or ever so slightly poisoning the neighbors from ambient fumes... I was bitten by the bug much later in life.

In college my most dominating interest was in argumentation, thus a degree in Philosophy/Logic. However, I became interested in the hard sciences toward graduation. I ended up taking a couple of low level physics classes, an astronomy class and biology. Yes, that is correct, no chemistry classes

About four years ago I became interested in WW2 era military rifles and believe it or not, this interest managed to lead- in an almost linear way- to my present interest (read obsession) with general chemistry.

I have begun to renew my interest in physics, chemistry, and mathematics in a consistent and disciplined way over the last year and a half. (I actually started grad school in mathematics but did complete a semester... )

I have never had any problems with "books", I graduated summa. However! praxis is another thing altogether... But alas, I have begun to educate myself both specifically and generally as to the subject/subjects. Even taking online courses via the MIT OpenCourse website. One has to begin at the beginning and I have decided to follow Aristotle's age old dictum as per such (rough transliteration: "well begun is half done"). Therefore I am using low level college texts, online courses and tutorials, and this website as sources of edification Hell, I have even dusted off some old physics texts I have around, e.g. Feyman's lectures...

Considering I spent most of my adult life as a competitive powerlifter, I think it's time to engage in a more cerebral pursuit.

Wish me luck in my endeavor, at my age (I'll be 43 next month) I'll need it.

[Edited on 6-3-2009 by Aristocles]

Quote: Originally posted by redox

I then forgot about chemistry for a few years. When I about ten, my dad bought me a cool little micro-set. It came with about 40 different reagents, about 1 gram each. I was fascinated with the fact that on the bottles was an overzealous warning about toxicity. COBALT CHLORIDE--EXTREMELY POISONOUS. Yeah right! The LD50 is 80 mg/kg, thus I would need about five bottles of it to maybe kill me.