Hey guys. I'm looking for a chemistry book for kids I read many years ago in my hometown's public library. It would probably have been written in the mid 1960's to early 1970's. It had some experiments in it that were just incredible, in their topic, complexity, innovation and, most of all, complete disregard for a child's safety.
You know, the sort of book you never find these days, as it completely lacks the much more important topics, like hand-holding, tree-hugging and insuring everyone feels good about themselves, despite results. OK, that last comment is a little harsh, consider it a little bit of hyperbole for amusement's sake.
I don't know the title or authors, but I'd recognize the book if I saw it. That doesn't help you guys, of course, but the general question is, where would you go to browse old books like this?
I'll give you guys some of the content of the book, in case it rings a bell for someone. First off, it contained a subset of Feigl's spot tests for some elements. Now that was a fascinating topic for me as a kid, despite the fact that it was useless. I didn't have any real need to identify nickel salts, for example, and couldn't possibly have found dimethylgloxime anyway, but I loved reading this part. As a matter of fact, I recently bought a beat up Fifth Edition of Feigl, just to have it. In these days of flame and ICP analysis, these tests are outdated, except perhaps for these forums,
but I like having it. I don't like information dying.
Another topic was paper chromatography. Not the simplistic stuff done by high schools, but a real, careful, step-by-step procedure, involving ruled lines and other serious treatments of the procedure, more like what I'd seen people do when spotting numerous pharmaceuticals on a TLC plate at work, so you can see why I'm interested in this procedure I only vaguely remember -- it might be topical for me, even today. The book even suggested do the procedure again, not following the procedure carefully at specific points, so as to see the effect on your results. Things like, "deliberately leaving dirty or greasy fingerprints on the blotting paper", or "omit the ruled line and just try to prove after the fact which spot went where".
There was this quick procedure for making an electric furnace. Basically, you'd take the resistance wire from a toaster, and wrap it around a porcelain crucible. You'd embed the crucible in vermiculite in a ceramic flowerpot, and wire the resistance wire to two bolts you'd protrude through holes you'd drilled in the side of the flower pot. You'd plug a adapter into those two prongs and the other end into the house current.
Such adapters were common back in the '60's, I'd seen them in appliances back then. You can see why this book is not left lying around where kids can find it anymore.
There was a procedure for extracting silver from photographic wastes. I read this one over and over as well. Part of the procedure involved suspending the silver containing wastes in conc. NaOH, and boiling them, while adding small amounts of sucrose, periodically. Eventually, you'd reduce the silver to a heavy grey precipitate of silver oxide in a brown liquid, although I don't know what the purpose of the sucrose is. I'd need the book, so I could look up in the references, to see where the book got this procedure from. The topic of using sugar in analytical chemistry has even come up here, on these boards. See here,
http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=22233.0 So, I wish I did have access to this book for it's references.
Also there was what can only be described as the weirdest electrochemical cell I'd even seen. It involved platinum electrodes, coated with platinum black, the usual salt bridge, and I don't reall what was in one half-cell, but in the other one, an emulsion made of water, molasses and living yeast cells. If I recall correctly, and this experiment is real sketchy in my mind, the fermentation provided the potential, whether it was the break down fermentation products, or if this cell was somehow tapping into the NADH produced by yeast when they ferment I don't know. Again, I'd need to see the book and it's references.
There's probably a lot more in this book that I've forgotten, because I didn't understand the topics back then. At any rate, I'm hoping the gang here can offer some help. If nothing else, you've all discovered what a freak I am, and know to question my answers a little bit.