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.