Our Chemstart 52 box has been sitting in my bedroom cupboard for a month, and the excitement in our house has been palpable. But we were officially on summer holiday when it arrived, so it has been peeked at, had its cover read, turned around and examined from all angles… and it has generally created a huge amount of anticipation. So when we started school this week, we had to do Chemistry on our first day.
What is Chemstart 52?
It’s a science kit, basically, designed by Bathabile Mpofu. I’m going into my 8th year of homeschooling, and during that time, I’ve explored and used many science kits, but I have never found anything as comprehensive as this, and never anything at this price (R749 from the Nkazimulo Applied Science site). It helps that the kit is designed by an actual scientist, who identified a lack of lab experience in learners from underserved schools, having had the experience herself. And like the innovative woman she is, she created the solution!
“Mpofu believes that science and technology are critical to building the economy, because innovation is founded on scientific discovery and original thinking, which in turn are founded on a good foundation in science education. “If we can’t get that right,” she says, “then we’re going to remain the way that we are – always dependent on someone else, some other country to create something new, which we then buy.”[1]”
What’s in the box?
When I opened up the box, my first impression was that the whole kit is really well thought out. It really is a lab in a box. The lab equipment is very good quality. The Erlenmeyer flask, watch glasses and test tubes are glass and the beakers and measuring cylinder are plastic (helpful when little hand are doing the filling from the taps). Other than a few items that you normally have on hand in your kitchen or bathroom, you literally have everything in the box that you need to perform the experiments.
The experiments
The kit comes with a book with comprehensive instructions for 52 experiments – one for each week of the year. We did the first experiment on chemical kinetics, testing how quickly a chemical reaction makes products from reagents.
It involved making 3 solutions:
- Solution A – sodium hydroxide in water
- Solution B – dextrose in water
- Solution C – some of solution B with water (so a more dilute solution)
The experiment involved mixing equal parts of A and B and using an indicator (Methylene blue) to show visually that the chemical reaction was taking place. We had to time how long it took.
We then had to shake the flask and it turned blue again.
We repeated the experiment with A and C (less reagents) and compared the time it took to change colour.
The science bit:
The initial colour of the solution is blue, but upon standing for a short interval it spontaneously fades to colourless, as the alkaline dextrose solution reduces the methylene blue to colourless leuco-methylene blue. Shaking the flask causes the oxygen present in the head space air in the flask to dissolve in the solution and oxidize the leuco-methylene blue back to its coloured form again.[2]
You can see the experiment here
This video uses KOH instead of NaOH but the principle and mechanism of action is the same
This is a really interesting longer video showing the principals of kinetics if you have older students and want to go into the theory like we did
Why I love Chemstart 52
And this brings me to why I love this kit so much. Being able to do experiments at home brings chemistry to life for our students. It makes it a real and tangible subject – not some boring theoretical subject. I was able to put together a lesson that my 7, 13 and 16 year old could enjoy and take part in; that could stimulate all of them on their various intellectual levels. Today was not a ‘science day’ but my daughter was begging me to bring out the kit and do experiments. She can’t wait for Monday. Fostering a love of the sciences at an early age is vital to future learning.
On a practical note, I love that the kit is refillable – it’s not a once-off use item. This has been my issue with kits that I’ve used in the past – they’re expensive, and once you’ve done the experiment (or two) included in the box, you’re left with useless bits of plastic and nothing else. I have four children that I homeschool so being able to buy homeschool equipment that lasts through several school careers is important to me. You can also buy chemical kits for grade-specific experiments for high school if your children are doing chemistry in Grade 10-12.
I love that whole kit packs away neatly. The polystyrene cutouts make it easy to see if you’ve forgotten to pack something in after cleaning, so keeping your kit intact is easy, and storing on a shelf (away from little hands) is not difficult.
All in all, this is a well thought out product, it’s perfect for homeschoolers, it serves the community, it’s good value for money and it supports local business.
This gets two thumbs up from us.
The first 5 lucky readers get 30% off their order of the Chemstart 52 kit using the offer code Superquatro01
Get yours today!
Disclaimer: I was gifted a Chemstart 52 kit for the purposes of this blog post
[1] Finweek March 2019
[2] Dutton, F. B. (1960). “Methylene Blue – Reduction and Oxidation”. Journal of Chemical Education. 37 (12): A799. doi:10.1021/ed037pA799.1.
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