This book is from the golden age of accessibility to chemistry. The age of coal was changing to the world of oil, and alchemy was real - and all girls and boys could be a Thomas Alva Edison or a George Washington Carver, a Madam Marie Curie or (in our dreams - just be OURSELVES and be) famous and having way too much fun. This and the "Golden Book of Chemistry" made MANY scientists, and careers, and created understanding on the part of those who played but did not obsess. However, these two books are to use and to obsess over. Fun was NEVER so dangerous - JUST as it should be. Learning was NEVER so thorough. Learning was never so easy.

Great for adults, too. Take a serious magic journey into bad-ass chemistry with your child (I personally recommend adult involvement which is not prevention, by the way). You guys will make really nasty messes, and cool reactions, and break things. You may cut a finger or two, burn a table and otherwise piss off your mother or father. This stuff is really cool for mothers to get into too. Just DO it!!!!!

Absolute magic, and a creator of parent love bonds stronger than the biggest ionic or covalent bond you can think of.

Serious involvement only, though. No partial attention please, as I quote some of the substances generated and used: Acetic acid, nitric and sulfuric acids, hydrochloric acid, finely powdered active acids and strong bases, hydrogen and oxygen, using chemical dissociation and electrical decomposition, burning sodium, lithium, potassium metals, using phosphorus experimentally, heating and melting glass and using flammable liquids and gases, using fragile glass containers and otherwise threatening ourselves and others!!

Calcium carbide for example in water will generate acetylene gas; in acids can generate explosive hypergolic bursts of magic. WOOT! And hypergolic you should look up.

You are warned; additionally, it is totally addictive.

Really, these books will enable you to recreate the exciting experiments of chemistry - the really fun pre-nuclear sort. Even in today's somewhat more restrictive mileu, you are instructed and well advised on creating a useful and creative laboratory, stocking it initially, and refining your by-products of reaction into useful substances, learning reduction-oxidation and general equation balancing as you go. You could use these two books together to great effect. Go forth, discover.

Make a place for your experiments together, with a work surface you keep clean and empty, some closed storage maybe lockable if you get serious to keep little hands from becoming little stubs or having fewer than the standard number of digits. Safety glasses are almost free and nitrile gloves are available in very small sizes. Do keep a bucket of dry sand and a good fire extinguisher next to your lab table, and have two open-able windows and a caged canary.

Forget the canary - it will die quickly. This is called a hint.

Consider building a fume hood, which is really easy to do and would add a lot of safety (especially if you unbreakable glass) to things you do. Be overly cautious as it is really easy to generate chlorine gas and phosgene gas, cyanide use and bromine, fluorine and other life changing substances. People came home from world war one (and still from industrial accidents) as lifelong invalids. Home insurance usually covers chemical experiments, but if you keep reactive substances, make provision to store them locked away, with liquids and solids as categorically separated as possible. I once (as that 8 year old boy) had a pharmacist demonstrate mixing hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide and drinking it, after showing how each was individually dangerous; that got my attention and really frightened me a bit. Accuracy was clearly important and it came home to me.

Seriously, this is excellent but not for unsupervised 8 year olds, adult or child. One of you needs to be 21, if you try the GOOD experiments...if you are the mom person, be aware....

Some lab-ware and chemicals may get you noticed by authorities, but nothing you are doing is illegal (I am not a lawyer) per se, except trying to make dangerous fireworks using powerful oxidants and oxidizers. Plenty of dangerous things don't require powdered aluminum and potassium perchlorate. Not being able to do this kind of chemistry in school is pathetic but don't add to stupid statistics by doing really stupid things with lots of volume.

Kaaaaa-boooooooooooooom.

Incredible period drawings of equipment and techniques; many experiments with context; dangerous but so what.