Chemistry at home as a kid - Jack Baldwin
Hey all,
I've just been reading an interview published in the latest edition of Synlett with one of the big names of organic chemistry, Jack Baldwin.
Here's an extract from the interview, which I thought was very relevant to the philosophies of many on this site:
Question: What was it that led you to follow a career in organic chemistry?
Answer: Even as a small child I devoured books – at my infants school my schoolteacher used to call me the “walking encyclopaedia”. At the age
of 9 I discovered a book on chemistry and was immediately struck by how it revealed a world totally distinct from that in which I had lived so far.
Elements such as bromine, chlorine, hydrogen, sodium and potassium were totally beyond my experience to that point but I wanted to meet them.
At about that time a person in the village, who had employed my friend’s mother as a cleaner, passed away leaving an extensive chemistry kit that
was obtained for the sum of £10.00. It was a real chemistry kit with retorts, funnels and flasks as well as lots of chemicals including 98% sulfuric
acid, a substance I would have found very difficult to source at my age. I rapidly found out that this syrupy, corrosive liquid was essential for so
many inorganic chemical reactions, allowing me to prepare the hydrogen, chlorine, bromine and iodine that I longed to meet. When I ran out of my
initial supply of concentrated sulfuric acid I found I could generate fairly concentrated solutions – about 70% – by heating hydrated zinc
sulfate, “white vitriol”.
After that my father let me have a battery and I constructed a cell to electrolyse molten sodium hydroxide to prepare metallic sodium. I couldn’t
make very much but I was fascinated by the glistening globules of molten sodium appearing and reacting at the cathode.
Then I graduated to organic chemistry of a sort, filling oil drums with acetylene generated from calcium carbide and igniting them with a fuse made
from a long piece of string soaked in paraffin. This resulted in huge explosions; although sometimes the fuse would go out and this would lead to hot
debates about who among my friends would “volunteer” to relight the shortened fuse!
I loved the acrid smell of the chlorine, the rich red colour of the bromine and the yellow flames as the sodium reacted with water. Sulfuric acid, the
“goddess of chemistry” and inorganic chemistry had opened a door into a whole new and wonderful world that I had never guessed could exist. I have
maintained the wonder for chemistry throughout my life. The love of the colours and smells and the whole visual – and of course three-dimensional
– aspects of chemistry has stayed with me and has been central to my career.
Naturally, during the course of such experimentation my mother’s kitchen did suffer a certain degree of attrition; but what can you expect when a 10
year old is working with such things as concentrated sulfuric acid? The trouble nowadays is that health and safety issues dominate the teaching of
chemistry. Young people would turn more readily to the sciences if they could benefit from a little less restriction and more imagination in the
provision of practical work at school.
I particularly like the last paragraph...
In any case, you can read the full thing here:
http://www.thieme-connect.com/ejournals/pdf/synfacts/doi/10....
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