More Chemistry on a Budget

 I just finished a week of Mad Science Camp.  I was reminded of many micro-scale and low-cost experiments. Micro-scale labs use small amounts of chemicals; these labs are both safer and cheaper.   Yes, you can buy MicroChem kits.  They are expensive!  What do you need to start?  You’ll need reaction plates (or paint pallets), pipettes, (or a medicine dropper), craft sticks, cassette cases (to hold pipettes), film canisters, a thermometer, drinking straws, q-tips, funnels, 10 mL graduated cylinders, and a 50 mL beaker.  You can do sophisticated labs, such as these four labs.  What about this Alka-Seltzer lab?  (Later blast off some Alka-Seltzer rockets.). Use pipettes; put them in cassette cases for this lab.  Look at these Flinn Scientific Micro-scale kits.  Do a search for the lab instructions with Google.  For example, here is the Micro-mole lab.  Below are a few pix from Camp this week of simple, low-cost tools to do Chemistry.  Take a look.