High School Chemistry Day in San Francisco 2014

The American Chemical Society will hold its 248th National Meeting in San Francisco, CA on August 10-14, 2014. More than 15000 scientists are expected to attend and over 7000 presentations are slated, comprising symposia that highlight a broad range of scientific advancement. The theme of the Fall meeting is Chemistry & Global Stewardship.

To Inquiry or not to Inquiry . . .

Sarah Kong | Wed, 06/04/2014 - 18:20

Here is something to ponder as you think about your lab experiences this year:  I have been using an excellent inquiry lab for the past few years.  I think it does a fabulous job guiding the students through the amazing (yet often dull to students) world of specific heat equations and learning about calorimetry.  However, this semester, I returned to the old, traditional calorimetry lab.  I wan

Floating Squares

Deanna Cullen | Tue, 06/03/2014 - 13:00

I was looking for a new demonstration to initiate a discussion about polarity and related properties to use as part of an exam review. I found a video at ChemEd X (this is part of a ChemEd X subscription). It is entitled “Floating Squares – Hexane and Water” (see note below). I have placed both solutions together before, but I had not added the squares. The demonstration fulfilled my needs. I could have used the original video and muted it if I had not had hexane to demonstrate with.

Reflections on a (Virtual) Guest Speaker Visit to my Chemistry Class

Lowell Thomson | Sat, 05/31/2014 - 22:57

I've mentioned previously that my current grade 10 class is reading "The Case of the Frozen Addicts" together. As my students starting writing their blogs to respond to the reading, I saw quite a few questions that I couldn't answer. But I didn't want to leave the questions there with no response, so I went to Twitter to find scientists to join my class as a guest speaker.