nagyepf
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What was amateur chemistry like in the USSR?
Could someone,who actually lived in the USSR tell me what was amateur chemistry like there?
Was it a popular hobby?
Could you get chemicals and equipment easily?
And similar.
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Schleimsäure
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I did not live in the USSR but in the GDR.
The chemistry set I owned had a Russian manual translated into German. I'm not sure if the set itself was also a copy of a Russian set. The Russian
and translated German name of the manual was "The young chemist".
Here is a picture, I had exactly that one, with 11 years or so, upper left is the manual:
As for other reagents I don't know on availability. A contact to someone in the chemical industry could have been very helpful. And the GDR had lots
of chemical industry and superb glassware (Rasotherm = basically the same as Schott).
I just got some extras from my father, some sulfur, some KOH solution, some formic acid. Unfortunately I gave up the hobby after the wall came down.
Basically hobby chemistry was highly encouraged just to get new talents for the large chemical industry in the GDR (Buna, Petro-Schwedt, Bitterfeld,
Wolfen etc. pp.)
I'm sure that is also true for the USSR.
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teodor
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Wow! I had the same (and I lived in USSR, so I can write more on the topic tomorrow - but sorry for my English in USSR we had a little chance to study
a real English language  . But WOW! (my funnel was white. Actually, I still have
the box).
By the time my mother bought it for me I had almost all these chemicals already. What was great is the approach they used to study chemistry in the
book. Also the thing you had everything (Almost) you need in the box.
But I discovered it is just simplified version of the famous Gilbert's set. Anyway, the great thing. Thank you for the picture.
(And I used that nice retort to make my first HNO3 ever, also getting a good sniff of NO2).
[Edited on 22-7-2019 by teodor]
[Edited on 22-7-2019 by teodor]
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Schleimsäure
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Actually I read some German students semester work on the history of chemistry sets. His "conclusions" and remarks are pretty weak, but it is
interesting anyway. Back in the 1910s,20s, 30s you had still Benzene, Aniline, HNO3, perchlorates etc. in the sets for teenagers. In the time after
the war, 50's or so it was still very liberal.
Under this circumstance the Russian/GDR set was already quite restricted. You still had KMnO4, or Methyl orange. But only 10% HCl for example. I guess
because this special set was adressed to 9-12 year olds. I got it with 9,10 or 11, can't remember exactly.
I still have a hobby chemistry book from the GDR of the 60s. "Chemie selbst erlebt" ("chemistry experienced personally"). It's a good book. In it it
is recommended to get hold of some potentially harmful reagents. In some cases to ask/join a private study group or a chemistry related plant.
While on the one hand mercury is described as unsuitable, on the other hand there is an experiment illustrated to make Nitroaniline from Aniline and
mixed acid. And I did that only some years ago in my mid to late 30's
Ja, nice pictures from the past.
[Edited on 22-7-2019 by Schleimsäure]
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teodor
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The Gilbert's set of 1935 ( I use this information about it) - is also quite restricted. Based on my own child experience and current knowledge the only one thing I would exclude
if I will make a present to modern children is CCl4. Alas, some of modern children have a little ability to be surprised by a nature, this is a bit
of problem. Understanding of what is natural and common and what is unusual is very important to do experiments, you should value unusual things.
Also, if you have experience working with the staff started from your childhood you will not think about H2SO4, HNO3, Cl2 as about more "dangerous"
things than fireplace or cars or mountains or sea or big heavy stones - just should have some respect and habits how to use it. OK, be very careful
and lucky, that all I can say. In Germany a teenager (at least coming into the shop with parents) can legally buy a real sword from stainless steal.
Just for fun. I think it has not less danger than concentrated H2SO4.
I didn't have benzene or aniline and didn't synthesize them when I was a child. I didn't know who did experiments with them. But phenol was used just
to wash floors, but not everywhere.
About 10% HCl. Did you noticed, this set doesn't contain or suggest to use googles. And doing experiments I got this 10% HCl spraying in my eyes from
a test tube not once. But had no big problems.
Also, the safety was on high level according to the knowledge on that time. There were books for HOME experiments and books for TEACHER to do
experiments with children. Every book was revised. It contained a lot of information about safety. For example, it was advised to give some reagents
(like BaCl2) in form of papers - soak a paper in a solution then dry it. So, it is not like that in USSR was unsafe. But schools had good supply of
chemicals (our school were for children 7 - 16 years and chemistry was started I think from 13-14 - of course I started to do it long before).
Chemical cabinets in good schools had a drain near each table. The typical comment by teacher about dissolving something in HNO3 was "if you will get
NO2 say me immediately". It was a general school for everybody, not a special one.
Of course it was "unofficial chemistry". Every boy was playing with KNO3, CaC. For CaC some guys went to some construction place and collected it. But
really, you were not considered as a boy if you didn't do some dangerous stuff.
A lot of chemicals had domestic usage. So, it was quite natural environment for doing chemistry. The information was a problem.
[Edited on 22-7-2019 by teodor]
[Edited on 23-7-2019 by teodor]
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Schleimsäure
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Oh, the book that I mentioned on Hobby Chemistry in the GDR, with the Nitrobenzene synthesis was much more adressed to young adults, at least 16+. I
just had it at way much younger life and did not understand it yet.
As already mentioned, the set above was adressed to age 8-12 or so.
The 10% HCl is ok for that, sure.
Funny, we played with CaC2 too, which was basically "organized" from construction sites. Well, my older brother used to weld sometimes, preferably on
Moskvich cars.
Of course C2H2 welding was most common besides electrodes. And once there was suddenly a big fat plastic sack full of CaC2 in the cellar. Must have
been 25 kg at least. Me and friends gladly took some
[Edited on 23-7-2019 by Schleimsäure]
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teodor
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So, I didn't participated in any sections for children neither studied in a special school. My mother tried to keep me as far from chemistry as
possible (my grandfather's brother was a chemist who died from phosgene poisoning after doing an unsuccessful experiment in a lab). I know that main
source of knowledge for young people about chemistry was a school, but for me it was encyclopedia and my uncle and the books my uncle bought me.
I didn't understand much when I did the experiments, so didn't make a big things. Well, I invented my own photo-processing, I used an old photo
camera to make projection directly on a photo paper and then I processed the paper the way to get a positive image - so I shown the photo in 3 minutes
after exposition, it was impressive for my guests.
I tried to replicate processes which run in living cells, different organic synthesis. I didn't know it was impossible to do in a flask the same way.
We had a good old teacher of chemistry in a school, but she left the school before I had a chemistry classes there. But some day, when some other
teacher was sick, she used that time to make a very impressive demonstration of different experiments. The whole class was impressed. I remember it
was:
- putting a wet fabric in acetone and burning it without damage of the fabric
- Cleaning copper coins in HNO3 (this beautiful orange fumes and smell)
- Precipitation on these coins Hg, they looked like "silver" a couple of days
- Ferric salt + KSCN (like blood on a cloth). I did the chemistry already and that KSCN was my dream to make more experiments with.
My wife told me a story which experiments they did without a teacher (they had a key from a laboratory). So, they dropped Na in a water, boys took
(NH4)2Cr2O7 and burned it in a toilet (it was a small incident - they were caught by a cleaning women), a lot of funny things - so they were
interested to repeat something they saw in a class by themselves.
As for chemical sets. In USSR we had not such good shops everywhere. There was Moscow and the rest. Actually I lived in Ukraine, so it was the "rest".
If somebody had a travel to Moscow all parents asked to buy something for their children. We were unable to just go to local shop and buy, say,
glassware. Main sources were photographic shops (we had several in a city), different hardware stores and just "markets" - the places where people can
bring something and sell it (so, we had a lot of plants, laboratories etc. and I suspect most of the things were stolen from there). I didn't go to
these special "markets" when I was young, so I visited photographic shops and hardware store regularly. "Mother, let's buy this NaNO3 fertilizer, I
can do a lot of new things with it" - it was like this.
Very seldom on special occasions we had something unusual. I remember the day I bought 2 big boxes of glassware - beakers, flasks, test tubes, rods
etc. If you saw things like that the plan was run and buy the things immediately.
For distillation I just bended glass tubes (my uncle had a big box of them - this box is still not empty).
Was this hobby popular? Talking with boys in different places I discovered that most of them did something or knew somebody who did _something_.
_Something_ was usually some explosives - just for fun or to get respect from other guys (and possible the guys, I was talking with were those "other
guys", so they unable to tell me more about chemical hobbyist in their area). Guys who seriously did chemistry did it to become a chemist, so it was
connected with their education. Who did something just for fun did also a lot of other things, so the chemistry was the only one part of natural
science they had interest to. But when we got the way to make computers (the first our computers we soldered by ourselves) most of those guys started
to explore this new world, me too. We probably thought that it is possible to make an artificial intellect with our home-made computers in few years,
and chemistry became not so important in comparison. So, I returned to chemistry, let say, after 25 years.
I don't suspect there is a big differences between people from different countries. Well, some russian chemistry books contain information I unable to
find on Google, so, we can say about some USSR school of chemistry. But I know about it not more than probably you.
But doing experiment in childhood as well as doing all things I was possible to do to discover the world helped me also later in programming. So, I
think it is better to say about "natural science" as a hobby in our past.
[Edited on 23-7-2019 by teodor]
[Edited on 23-7-2019 by teodor]
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