Well lookie what we have here:

Age 10 years and over

Since I’m moving house in a few weeks time, I thought I’d cut down on the amount of junk we have to take by using up this old chemistry set. Since the only chemistry I remember is the production of Evil Concoctions, that’s what we did. Tools required:

• Glass mixing bowl
• Lots of chemicals
• Rubber gloves
• Safety goggles. Pity we didn’t have any.

Cobalt Chloride, Tartaric Acid, Manganese Sulphate… what more could a 10 year old want?

At some point in the distant past, I’d actually used this set, so not all the ingredient bottles were full. Most of the remaining ones were boring black and white powders which just sat in the bowl as we tipped them in. There were some interesting purples and reds along the way, but the colour of the goop was dominted by the pot of charcoal.

Corrosive you say?

There was a roll of shiny copper. Perhaps it was meant for an electroplating experiment, or some other educational use. We dumped it in with the rest.

It actually didn’t smell

After adding a chemical I don’t remember the name of, the mixture started bubbling. Probably making hydrogen gas. Or chlorine gas. We’d added some water to act as a solvent, lest the poweders just sit there in a pile and be boring.

Solids

Above, you can see a pair of tongs lifting some filter paper filled with a solid gunk that formed at the bottom. In the bowl is the unrolled copper and some blobs of wax we found in an old rotting jar. There’s tons of this putrescent clutter in the far reaches of the garden. I suppose it’s one of the reasons we’re moving.

Do not exhume within 1.7×10^11 years

When the set was completely consumed, and safe to be dumped in the regular rubbish bin, we still had to get rid of the bowl of chemicals. Rather than flush it down the toilet or wash it down the sink, and risk polluting the sewage system, we dug a hole in a barren area and buried it, polluting that instead. To prevent wild animals licking the ground and turning into some kind of, oh, I don’t know, monster, we entombed it forever by carefully placing a tile above the filled in pit.

We washed the remaining dregs out of the bowl and left it soaking in another concoction, this time of bleach and detergent. Did we learn anything from this experiment? Why of course! We mastered the science of the elements! Didn’t you read the box?