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posts about #chemistrysets more → 
Oldie But Goodie
New York, 5:20 PM
Wed Dec 2
71 posts in the last 24 hours
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Oldie But Goodie |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
12/10/08
12/10/08
As I kid I also had a chemistry kit. I promptly lost the instructions and was constantly mixing stuff from the kit with leaves and fruit pieces and making magic potions. My beauty potions had mango extract and aloe before it was a beauty trend ;)
12/10/08
And funnily enough, we were just having a conversation with the young'uns in the lab yesterday about the old chemistry sets they had in the days before lawn darts became illegal. I had actual sodium metal in mine. My mom sprang for the deluxe version, though. She saved all that money not buying me Barbies (although I did have the Sunshine Family with their craft cabin and a shit-ton of Micronauts) because she didn't mind me possibly losing a finger so long as I was smart and edumacated.
12/10/08
They always had a subscription to national geographic, a bunch of atlas, and gave me over the years a chemistry set, a dissecting kit, a rock tumbler, and tinkertoys!
However, I never had toys other kids considered cool :/
12/10/08
Seriously, though, I don't think the fact that this product was made and marketed to girls speaks to progressiveness as much as it does marketing savvy. The 50's was the time of the arms race and that brought about a greater focus on science in education, and the powers that be (er, were) wanted Americans to be the best at science so that we (or they, whatev) could Beat the Russians. So I would say that the Gilbert company was just exploiting this shift in the culture and they realized that by making a girly version, they could sell twice as many. I'd say it's smart marketing, and given that it's an educational toy, that's not so bad...
12/10/08
Nevermind that the US currently lags way behind in young people embarking into science careers.
12/10/08
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12/10/08
"the academic workplace...is designed in ways that discriminate against young faculty with family care responsibilities, most notably mothers." (Halpern, 2008)
To put it more simply:
tenure clock + bebes = TOO MUCH SHIT GOING ON AT ONCE!!!
12/10/08
12/10/08
But "most notably, mothers."
*sigh*
Wasn't Janie Gibbs supposed to have found a way around this by now?
12/10/08
"Women were also more likely to find their research repetitive and frustrating - 57% did, compared with 43% of the men. This finding, in particular, baffles Dr Shara Cohen, a former senior scientist who quit nine years ago to run her own business.
"Having children is also repetitive and has its disappointments," she says. "They're saying they don't like these things, but it is what they are used to doing with children. You'd think they would be good at this. Maybe they don't want to do them at work as well as at home.""
Oh, shut up. Having children is repetitive, but at least those children say, "I love you." Or show affection. Unless your PI that snarls at you for not having enough data for him to present at the latest conference to make himself look good. Repetition is fine, so long as you actually get credit for it. Chances are, in a lab, you won't.
12/10/08
Also, kids grow up and are in a constant state of change! An experiment runs its course and then is..over, and you have to start again (assuming you didn't blow up or contaminate your lab already)
12/10/08
12/10/08
And if it wasn't, it was only because you're too stupid to live. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
12/10/08
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12/10/08
Seriously, I might just give up after this is done and get a masters of ed or a speech therapy degree and work with special ed kids. I am so close to saying, "Screw trying to cure their problems, I don't want that life," that it's not even funny. I suppose that I am also qualified to teach college (non-research path), but that seems almost as bad as being a professor who teaches and does research, which was the original plan. I'd still be in the system.
Me=Debbie Downer.
12/10/08
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12/10/08
Then when I got to high school I realized it wasn't just about making messes. Oh, I got pretty good grades in high school chemistry, and I guess I enjoyed it, but it wasn't like I was discovering new properties of molecular physics or anything. If anything, it was a little bit tedious. (No offense to chem majors out there--it just didn't turn out to be my cup of tea.)
Maybe all I needed was a bunch of gender-specific pink shit.
12/10/08
One of my favorite books was "Science Experiments! Amaze your friends" Where they had you make friends guess if cold water or hot water froze faster. And how to lift an ice cube using a string.
And yet. . . my friends could have cared less.
12/10/08
LAME
Where were the explosions?! I was willing to sacrifice my eyebrows!
12/10/08
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12/10/08
But she got me as a daughter- I managed to fail science in the 5th grade. I needed a kit like this!!
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