Creating a Poof and Not a Giant Kaboom

Linda: My name is Linda Jeshofnig. My company is Hands-On Labs, and we produce science lab packs that are used by college students so that they can take their science courses fully online. When you're doing science experiments, the objective is the reaction, not the size of the reaction. I like to say, you only need a "poof" to understand gas law, you don't have to have a giant "kaboom". You don't need to have huge beakers of chemicals when small quantities will work to see whether or not there is a physical change in the chemicals. So, by applying these concepts, we are doing the same types of experiments on a much smaller scale. This makes it possible for students to do campus-equivalent lab work at home. I was compelled to make a business out of it. The big obstacles were to find someone who could manufacture them for me, and liability insurance. If you're putting together 100 chemistry kits, and they have over 60 chemicals in them, you're looking at over 6,000 little individual packages. These kits are not toys. They truly do replicate what students do on campus, and you can imagine if you go talk to an insurance agent and you tell them that you need business insurance because you're sending hydrochloric acid to students in their homes and they run screaming away (laughing). But I found an insurance agent who had actually been a chemistry major in college who was familiar with small-scale and micro-scale chemistry. He had no problem with insuring us. Today, we produce science lab packs for colleges in every state in the U.S., and spanning not just chemistry but also biology, geology, physics, microbiology, and anatomy and physiology. They are used by a lot of nursing programs and even forensics and environmental sciences. We've been doing this for eighteen years, have a 100% safety record, and I think most importantly, the students have proven that they can and they will take responsibility for their own learning, that they can do real science work at home. I really am passionate about science education. Science teaches rational skepticism, and dissuades magical thinking, and it just lays a pattern for problem-solving that I think will aid almost anyone in living a more successful life because they'll make better decisions.