Kid-made science kits

I met 15-year-old Connor at a signing in Raleigh-Durham. He asked great questions and was a fun audience member, but even so, he blew me away when he revealed after the talk that he's been making and selling science kits for kids since he was nine, and has built a modest and successful business out of this, and uses his proceeds and his profile to give talks about entrepreneurship at struggling schools without much science curriculum.

They're cool kits, and Connor's a fantastic kid.

Kits for Kids (Thanks, Connor!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Science

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

saadaaahndhagee

Thanks guys, that makes sense.
jtegnell

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people refer to “Raleigh-Durham” as if it’s one place.

Raleigh and Durham are two cities, they’re in two separate counties, they don’t overlap or abut.

Just because the airport is called Raleigh-Durham doesn’t mean there is a place, other than that airport, called Raleigh-Durham. Nobody from North Carolina would ever refer to “Raleigh-Durham” except when talking about the airport, and then it would most likely be “RDU”.
- Anonymous
  
  I lived in Raleigh for four years (and North Carolina in general for seven) and while I too recognize that Raleigh and Durham are two separate cities, I have heard it referred to as Raleigh-Durham by the outside world. It doesn’t strike me as particularly strange.
  - jtegnell
    
    And that’s the thing — as you say, the “outside world”. Nobody in North Carolina refers to it as Raleigh-Durham.
    
    It’s simply an error caused by thinking the name of the airport is the name of the place.
    
    It’s akin to referring to New York City as “LaGuardia”.
Anonymous

saadaaahndhagee #11 – I assume it’s because some parents signed releases for their kids to appear in the video but some did not.
adwkiwi

Kids learning two important things: slime is fun, and when you see some, you should poke it with a stick. The essence of science :)
Simeon

What an inspirational guy. Whether driven by desire to educate or entrepreneurial spirit, it looks like he’s found his element early and I wish him every success.
The fascination young kids have with the physical world is borne of the same stuff as ‘science’ – a desire to explore and understand. My own five year old boy constantly surprises with his capacity to grasp concepts that eluded me until much later in my own education. Example – at the weekend he was explaining to me and his brother that we are always moving really fast through, we just can’t feel it cos we are stuck to our planet. We went to a boot sale and while I was scouting for hotwheels and electronic toys, he picked out a microscope and telescope for himself.
All parents think their kids are geniuses – that’s because they all are until the education system knocks it out of them.
Go Connor!
Anonymous

Does anyone know the chemicals used to create the polymer?
- cjp
  
  Here’s a link with a recipe for homemade polymer. Not sure if it’s the same one as in the video, but it looks like fun. I can’t believe not one kid fake sneezed in that vid.
  http://www.sciencebob.com/experiments/polymer.php
LeftyX

Thank you jtegnell for beating me to the punch on this. I’ve heard this on every flight I’ve made back home — in DURHAM (which is home to Duke University), not Raleigh (home to North Carolina State U.) — and it irritates me no end…
querent

man that was badass.

“are we gonna do more slime today?”

Connor definitely seems like he’ll make a cool TA in about 5-7 years.
saadaaahndhagee

Do you guys know why there are some kids with mosaics over their faces? I found that disturbing. I thought at first that their faces were covered because they were going to do something stupid and so the video creator hid their faces to kind of protect those kids. But the kids didn’t seem to be doing anything odd.
- Nicco
  
  Since they obviously blurred only specific individuals, they (or more likely their parents) probably requested anonymity. Not too strange, in my opinion.
- Anonymous
  
  It’s likely because their parents didn’t sign a release stating that they could be shown in the video.
LogopolisMike

Wow as if there weren’t enough people my own age making me feel like I’m not doing enough with my life — now there’s somebody 20 years younger doing it?!?!

Thanks a bunch, kid.

(Seriously, though, this is awesome.)
Anonymous

another science kit that i love is by 3dmoleculardesigns.com while its more model based than experiments, as a kinesthetic learner i found deeper understanding of a number of scientific principles.
Stefan Jones

Just watched the video. Cute stuff.

Maker Faire should lure Connor for an appearance.