My Scientific Prehistory

A long time ago when i was really young, still in primary school, i had a couple of ideas. And ambitions. But i was still not quite ambitious then...even though i tried to make an airplane out of cardboard boxes and gliding out of my house from the top floor balcony. That was when i had a vague but strong interest in science and technology and engineering, tried to set up my own "electronics lab". I had a "fume chamber" to perform hazardous experiments with, like creating this "highly potent" solution which required liquefying an insecticide spray...so you can imagine me spraying that aerosol can in that chamber onto a glass bottle that once contained "Brand's Essence of Chicken"...or maybe i used some other bottle...but boy i loved those bottles...very "scientific-looking". Very pro...hahaha Hey don't laugh! The chamber really worked, and you can't smell a single thing. Until you had to open the flaps(?) to remove the bottle of potent solution. The chamber was built from i think a scaffold of tough cardboard fax thermal paper rolls, cling-wrap, disembowelled computer keyboard chassis...

Then there was the 'wet lab'...it was in this toilet that we never really used. I can't recall what i called it in the past, when i would put up signs on A4 paper on the doors, which would name the labs too. Its the kind of thing that a primary school kid would use to show he was 'in-business'. The wet lab was the site of one of the most crazy experiments...i read somewhere that you could cause a piece of muscle to contract by applying electricity to it. One day in school, our teacher performed a crab dissection for our science lesson. I took home the claw. At home, i opened up part of the shell, and probably did some crazy things with it. May have included applying electricity from some battery. I did sth similar with pork, and saw it turn blue. I'm not sure if these two experiments were done at around the same period, or if they were separate pursuits.

Of course, the 'wet lab' contains my prized possessions of 'chemical collections', such as Boric Acid, which came in the form of my dad's overdue eyedrops, silica gel, which i had read was a dessicant, and Isopropyl Alcohol, which was rubbing alcohol, and i pretty liked the name. I think there may have been some glycol thymol thingy, which is actually mouthwash. haha...Of course, the most prized possession was my carefully synthesised 'potent chemical' which was supposed to be extra corrosive and contains insecticide and rubbing alcohol, among other things. I never had a chemistry set. I'd pass these things, and toy microscopes and all that, and look at them with contempt. haha the crazy chemical collection was all stocked by myself, reading labels on my own. it was a matter of ego and i'd tell myself those 'toy sets' were for ignorant 'scientist wannabes'. It was also a sign of envy and jealousy at whoever may own them...those who have money to get them.

The only successful product of my crazy prehistoric chemical pursuits was the 'anti-pimple lotion'. I gave it some name that was a slight modification of 'calamine'. After all the active ingredient was calamine. But there were other ingredients; i added rubbing alcohol (goodness...my fasination with rubbing alcohol...haha) and Johnson & Johnson's baby powder. AND i tested it on myself...to astounding success!!! If only temporary.

I SWEAR it made my pimples (yeah, it all happened during the onset of my puberty. also known as the time you peer into your pants and discover to your horror the emergence of pubes in the nether regions! *cough*cough* apologies...)
Anyway, I SWEAR it made my pimples disappear TOTALLY in just 5 minutes!!!
Though experimental evidence suggests this disappearing act is only temporary. Good enough for a quick beauty fix if you're meeting your first crush in the early blossom periods of the tween age. Of course i didnt have a crush at that age, so this wasn't necessary. My pimples bothered my mum more than they bothered me ahaha.

I love using the term 'prehistory' to describe these early scientific pursuits. they're my medieval times, my dark ages. the crazy times when i did all the crazy things, with no proper scientific knowledge and no one to guide me...obviously primary school science class is too lame to be taken seriously...i'm still as amused as i was at the end of primary two, just received my P3 texts and eagerly flipping through the pages of my first science textbook. Only to see sth that goes like : "Change. Changes are reversible or irreversible. Flip the switch on the wall, and the light turns on. This is a change. A reversible one." Of course this quote is inaccurate...the actual one probably sounded more stupid. haha i was amused. terribly amused. also very disappointed.


Must talk about the earliest working engineering creation of mine now. That was like in kindergarten. Bought a toy helicopter from some fair or sth at the kindergarten. It works like this: the heli rests on this mechanical thing that you hold with your hand. Use the other free hand to pull a cord, and through some gearing, this pulling would make the blades on the heli rotate fast enough to let it fly away from the contraption that it rests on. Pretty amazing. But what happened to the heli after that initial play with it, i can't remember. But i know what i did to the contraption. I had a pen whose nib came off or sth. Attached that to the contraption, pulled the cord, and the pen rotates. Out comes the ink, and onto the floor. Kewl. Call it "the ink sprayer". Wow. As i made a mess of the concrete floor, i thought about its potential use as a paint spray gun, and how the house's white walls would become blue from its use. I also remember feeling the Sense and Sanity Department of the Brain nudging me into accepting that this was not possible and that 'the ink sprayer' would not work well as a paint spray gun. Early signs of what is called "Feasibility Study/Assessment" in the so-called 'professional world'? haha


Oh no there's so much to talk about my scientific and engineering dark ages. I've just opened a can of worms. Couple of cans left...but too much to take for now...So that's all i'll recollect for today.