I was also interested in chemistry, but my parents were not willing to buy me a chemistry set.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Explorations into chemistry were done in our basement, sometimes with friends, and my parents must have had quite a bit of confidence in my abilities when they allowed me to experiment with explosive mixtures.
I also became interested in chemistry and gradually accumulated enough test tubes and other glassware to do chemical experiments, using small quantities of chemicals purchased from a pharmacy supply house.
To my disappointment, not many young people seem to be interested in science, especially chemistry.
My father never forced me, but chemistry was my best subject.
However, I survived and started to read all chemistry books that I could get a hand on, first some 19th century books from our home library that did not provide much reliable information, and then I emptied the rather extensive city library.
I was quite nerdy at school. I skipped a year and won a scholarship in chemistry.
In the evenings I studied chemistry at the University of Chicago, the weekends I helped in the family store.
At the age of 12, my parents gave me a chemistry set for Christmas, and experimentation soon became a consuming passion in my life.
When I was 11 years old, my mother bought me one of those chemistry sets, and I stayed with it.
When I was in elementary school, I was very interested in science already. I must have been ten or eleven years old. I started experiments with chemistry sets at my home in Mexico. I was able to borrow a bathroom and convert it to a laboratory. My parents supported it. They were pleased. My friends just tolerated it.