Celebrating 90 Years as the Premier Chemical Education Journal
The January 2013 issue marks the start of the 90th volume of the Journal of Chemical Education. This latest issue plus the content of all past volumes, 1 through 89, are available at http://pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc.
January 2013 will be available as a sample issue for the entire year, so the full text of all articles can be accessed without a subscription.
Cover: JCE Chemical Education Xchange Web site—ChemEd X
The cover images —the electrolysis of a silver nitrate solution to produce silver at the cathode—are from one of the many videos now available at the JCE Chemical Education Xchange Web site (ChemEd X). ChemEd X aims to foster sharing of digital resources, information, and ideas among chemical educators. Details about the Journal’s new partner Web site are described by Jon L. Holmes in JCE Chemical Education Xchange. In JCE Chemical Education Xchange: X Marks the Spot for Finding Quality Chemistry Education Resources, Deanna M. Cullen encourages educators to use resources at ChemEd X and invites them to contribute materials.
Commentary
Zafra Lerman discusses Human Rights, Education, and Peace: A Personal Odyssey in a commentary that was adapted from her award address for the 2010 George C. Pimentel Award in Chemical Education.
Orbitals
A number of articles in the issue focus on different aspects of teaching about orbitals:
Articles
Construction of Ligand Group Orbitals for Polyatomics and Transition-Metal Complexes Using an Intuitive Symmetry-Based Approach by Adam R. Johnson.
Teaching the Jahn–Teller Theorem: A Simple Exercise That Illustrates How the Magnitude of Distortion Depends on the Number of Electrons and Their Occupation of the Degenerate Energy Level by Adam Johannes Johansson.
Teaching the Spin Selection Rule: An Inductive Approach by Judith A. Halstead.
Technology Reports
Interactive Web-Based Pointillist Visualization of Hydrogenic Orbitals Using Jmol by Shane P. Tully, Thomas M. Stitt, Robert D. Caldwell, Brian J. Hardock, Robert M. Hanson, and Przemyslaw Maslak.
A Simple Hückel Molecular Orbital Plotter by Raghunathan Ramakrishnan.
Research on Inquiry in the Laboratory
A pair of chemical education research articles examine inquiry in chemistry laboratories:
Effect of the Level of Inquiry of Lab Experiments on General Chemistry Students’ Written Reflections by Haozhi Xu and Vicente Talanquer.
Effect of the Level of Inquiry on Student Interactions in Chemistry Laboratories by Haozhi Xu and Vicente Talanquer.
Comprehensive Demonstration
This demonstration includes aspects of most of the topics discussed in a typical general chemistry course: A Comprehensive General Chemistry Demonstration by Ryan D. Sweeder and Kathleen A. Jeffery.
In the Laboratory
There are many innovate laboratories in this issue, including: Aerobic Alcohol Oxidation Using a Copper(I)/TEMPO Catalyst System: A Green, Catalytic Oxidation Reaction for the Undergraduate Organic Chemistry Laboratory by Nicholas J. Hill, Jessica M. Hoover, and Shannon S. Stahl
In the News
The destructive potential of one of nature’s most destructive forces, the hurricane, is compared to one of human’s most destructive devices, an atomic bomb: Hurricane Ike versus an Atomic Bomb by Earl F. Pearson.
You will find the articles mentioned above, and many more, in the Journal of Chemical Education. Articles that are edited and published online ahead of print (ASAP—As Soon As Publishable) are also available.