Tell me more about glassware for Chemistry classes.

 Too often families feel as though they are short-changing their teens if they don’t provide expensive glassware for their Chemistry classes.  You aren’t.  I use 250 mL, borosilicate beakers to heat solutions.  I use 250 mL Erlenmeyer flasks mainly for gas law labs with rubber stoppers.  The only time I use a borosilicate graduated cylinder is to dilute concentrated acids—therefore rarely!   Usually I order 1M concentrations.  Most of the time my Chem classes use lab grade, plastic beakers, funnels, and cylinders.  I have about one dozen pieces of glassware I use very infrequently.  I do microscale Chem labs as often as possible.  Plastic, paint palettes work well as reaction plates.  Here is an example of the type of glassware you are probably tempted to buy,

In it are test tubes, glass stirring rods, a thistle tube, glass funnel, and culture tube. Guess what?  Glassware of any type is used reluctantly in any Chem class.  What?  High School Chemistry teachers are practical people trying to stretch limited budgets.  Those glass stoppers?  They freeze inside the flask all the time, rendering both the stopper and flask useless.  Broken glassware is expensive to replace.  Cuts and breakage require reports—also to be avoided.  Therefore many, many high school Chemistry teachers use plastic labware as much as possible.  They do microscale labs to minimize, cost, waste, and accidents.  Stop worrying that your Chem class is a pale shadow of the one he would receive in a school setting.  Do all the labs in the textbook.  Go crazy and buy a microscale lab kit!  (Find a used set.)  Ask friends who do have their kids enrolled in a school.  How many labs do they do?  What equipment do they use?  The results will surprise you.