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Comment by thrower123 | Hacker News Reader

Introductory chemistry that would be interesting would trend towards the expensive and the dangerous. I'm not sure how you fix that - high schools are not going to be letting kids do metallurgy or create black powder fireworks, so you are going to be stuck with the mostly pointless and very boring lab work.

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Michael Faraday's Chemistry History of a Candle.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0INsTTU1k2UCpOfRuMDR...

"Interesting" doesn't have to mean "spectacle". Getting a few droplets of water out of a burning candle isn't riveting to watch but its still very interesting.

> "Interesting" doesn't have to mean "spectacle". Getting a few droplets of water out of a burning candle isn't riveting to watch but its still very interesting.

Judging by the amount of stimulation thrown at kids these days, getting water out of a burning candle will most likely be classified between 'meh' to 'ok boomer'.

Making esters (smelly/fruity things) or doing colorful stuff (organic dyes, a bz reaction, etc etc) seems fun and not really dangerous?

That is probably going to appeal to about one half of a typical chemistry class, and leave the other half bored and sullen.

My experience of chemistry was that it was very abstract nonsense that was taught to us, which is incredibly sad, when chemistry is all around us all the time, and understanding how it works is invaluable. There are myriad practical examples to investigate. Why do your baking powder biscuits rise? Why does the octane rating of your gasoline matter? Photography. How does epoxy work? Etc, etc.

What we actually did was a lot of tedious equation balancing on paper, and titrating liquids.

Yup the same. I don’t remember a single lab, all I remember is the equation balancing which was dictated from above without any explanation as to why it worked or was relevant to reality.

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