Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Continued

About a year ago I picked up the book Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks. It was a wonderful read. It brought back memories of when I was younger and frequently stunk up my parents basement. I began to get the urge to begin experimenting again. Just after that I received another book called Time, Love, Memory by Jonathan Weiner. It talked about a biologist and his work on genetics and the fruit fly. I thought wow an amateur scientist should be able to do this in their own lab at home. I really like genetics, it seems so interesting.

So that is when I decided to try and build my own amateur science lab to play around in. I do not have alot of money so I had to be careful with what I went and bought. I began to search toy and department stores to see what was available in science kits. I figured it would be easier if I started out with a science or chemistry set and then added on to it myself. What a suprise I found. The chemistry sets were terrible, hardly any chemicals, no glassware, nothing. Microscopes were just as bad, cheap optics and made out of plastic. I could not believe how far we have regressed in our science teachings. So now I must build my lab another way.
So basically this is the story of how I will build my lab from what ever I could find to do my experiments. Basically the old fashion way as scientists back in the early times built most of thier own equipment. I will be keeping notes on what I find, where I find them, websites that help me, books and magazines that I come across and kits that are useful to the amateur scientist.

I hope others will follow my exploits and enjoy it as much as I will.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Build it Yourself Science Laboratory

I will use this blog site as a way to log my development of an amateur science laboratory. This site may help teachers and others to learn and teach about science. They can take some of the ideas and apply it for themselves.