Is this a Kit?
Teachers and Techncians often ask where they can obtain the kit for microscale chemistry. There is no actual kit.

A Radmaste kit (https://www.radmaste.org.za/) was sent to schools by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1999. The Equipment was “alien” to many teachers and technicians although we know some people have used it. One issue is obtaining specialised replacement parts which can be quite expensive.
The microchemistry procedures that I carry out, use established laboratory equipment but sometimes I “borrow” equipment from other sciences; example, plastic Petri dishes, usually used in biology, and 3 way taps used in medicine. This is what makes "alien" to those brought up with the traditional equipment.

However, I have sometimes developed and made equipment such as the sprit burner, colorimeter and conductivity indicator.

Modern technology (encapsulated in STEM education) has miniaturised a lot of electrical equipment, enabled the production of “new” materials such as carbon fibre, plastic folders etc and 3D printing has enabled us to even design bespoke equipment. Chemistry equipment is still very traditional in outlook and use. A mantra always used in designing microscale procedures is that it has to offer more than the traditional method. It is why, although available, there is no preparative organic microscale equipment used.

Thee are many versions of the equipment that follows that you can use.

 I read in Education in Chemistry from Kristy Turner and Nathan Owston that many students draw the curly arrow coming from hydrogen ions or positive (electron deficient) species rather than a particle with a lone pair of electrodes. There could be two factors here, one chemical and anthropomorphic,

1. our reliance on the Lowery-Bronsted and Arrhenius definitions of acids and bases in our courses to the detriment of the Lewis definition and
2. a deep-seated love of the “positive (good)” and wariness of the “negative (bad)”, a sort of hidden-anthropomorphic effect which challenges our common sense.

Every so often, you might be asked to look at a new curriculum for teaching chemistry. “Let’s start with a clean sheet of paper” only to find you end up with err, what you had when you started. It is very diffiult to remove certain items.
But one aspect you can change is the practical side of chemistry and bring it up to date.

I have been asked to contribute (amongst other contributions) to a Royal Society of Chemistry  book on Creative Chemistry. I jotted down some thoughts and sent them back. It has been edited well but I thought it might be useful to add more here. is there such a thing as "Creativity" in school chemistry?

If you you would to see how you and your students can make these halos and how they can help in teaching more about how cheksiry works, then read on.

Mounting the barrier of understanding between the macro event in a chemistry event and the interpretation at the nano level is one the most difficult achievements for both the student and the teacher..

Where does the chemistry teacher start with chemistry? The typical traditional start in  UK schools was with the destructive nature of the Bunsen burner with safety to introduce practical work and then onto elements, mixtures and compounds (which is quite a difficult concept) with separation techniques.

One on the objections to devising new equipment or novel procedures is the cry from some teachers that students will be at a disadvantage because the examiners will not ask questions about that procedure in the exam.
There has to be an overwhelming reason to me for changing a procedure including safety, reducing expenditure, improved classroom management, increasing the efficient use of time, more informative chemistry, gaining more insight to chemical processes and responding to the findings in chemical education research. On our CLEAPSS Helpline we get many enquiries about experiments not going as well as "the book" describes. I also mean by “the book” the suggested Examination Board procedures. In the UK, we have moved to a skill assessment of student's practical ability but the Boards still print out "suggested procedures" which we know at CLEAPSS to have flaws. Flaws that have been there for years and no one addresses.
The indestructible crucible is a case in point.

My microscale activities have to add something extra that traditional procedures cannot normally achieve. This can range from ease of presentation, better classroom management to, what I consider the most important, provide further evidence to students in how chemicals interact to form new substances.
On twitter, these little videos and photos can circle the world from London to Phoenix, Auckland, Sydney, Hong Kong, Ankara, Salzburg to Bolton back in the UK. I do not get many hits on the whole and if I reach 1000, it is very gratifying but two videos seemed to hit the spot recently. The video with the formation of the red slash of the iron-thiocyanate complex has achieved about 4,500 media engagements (MEs).

Let the particles do the work, part 2
CLEAPSS devised a simple small electrical conductivity indicator. The resistor in the circuit limits the current to protect the Light Emitting Diode (LED). The carbon fibre-rod electrodes are very strong unlike graphite.

Chemistry is difficult to teach. You have frustrating moments when you want to hit your head against the wall and go home saying “is it because of me, they don’t understand?”
I picked up an old book of mine published 1977. One Chapter starts “You are perhaps puzzled why is a free energy change, rather than the enthalpy change, which is a measure of the ability of a reaction to do work.” Wonderful! Here is an author sympathising with the student (and teacher) that our subject is hard. Thankfully, I am not alone.
Those words were written by Alex H Johnstone and G Webb in the book, “Energy, Chaos, and Chemical Change”. Nobody writes these types of books now. At 110 pages, aimed at the teacher and the 6th form to undergraduate level, it just not cost effective for publishers. You would find this sort of material on the web nowadays. We dash things off in a couple of days (well some people do). I suspect this book took several months of care. It also requires careful but provides rewarding reading. The words are simple but the concept is deep. I often had (and still do) to go back to it because thermodynamics in chemistry is difficult.​
​I was at a meeting of 40 chemistry teachers, having been invited to do a microscale workshop, with Professor David Read. David asked the teachers “How many of you have heard of Johnstone’s triangle”. (My version is on the right.) David is modern, he has electronic measuring equipment and they had to press a button, so we saw the answer immediately. Only one teacher had heard of it. When he put the triangle on the board, you could see flashing light bulbs coming from 39 heads. In this simple diagram, Alex Johnstone encapsulated the issues of teaching chemistry.

For years, I have tried to ensure practical chemistry is enjoyable, but not neccessarily just for fun. Fun chemistry is enjoyable but you do not learn anything from it. Enjoyable chemistry occurs when you learn, understand, have light-bulb moments, bells ring and memories come back of something you had observed but could not explain, now explained. A knowing smile beams across your face.

I have just returned from Japan. I had been invited by Professor Kazuko Ogino (seated centre) along with Professor Jorge Ibanez from Mexico, Professor Supawan Tantayanon from Thailand (see Feb 2016 blog), Dr Abdulazziz Alnajarr from Kuwait and Dr Marie Dutoit from South Africa, who pioneered  the MyLab chemistry kit. There were invited Japanese University lecturers and schoolteachers from Japan as well. What we had in common was a passion for the microscale approach to chemistry in both education and research.

Yes it was the time of the great divide in my school science education when the physics teacher moved from teaching direct current (DC - which seemed to be going somewhere) to alternating current (AC - which seemed to be going nowhere 50 times a second).

The only time the school chemist, other than putting the plug in the mains, has to use AC electricity is during the study of the conductivity of solutions, a topic long gone from the UK A-level syllabus. Physicists talk of electrical resistance and the chemist of electrical conductivity – great cooperation there.

“No”. “Boring lesson then”.
“Not in the least, chemistry is never boring”.
“Sir is being daft again”.

Of course some students think that if they now have carte blanche to burn all their possessions, such as  plastic pens, to see what happens, ie, they can mess about. That is why they like it.
The Bunsen burner has a powerful and expensive hold in UK practical chemistry. Its presence in practical work ultimately defines the set out of the school laboratory.