I am sitting in Greeley Colorado. It is the first day of the 2016 BCCE. Time to get my learn on! I have spent the last week pouring over the schedule and deciding what I want to attend and a huge problem has developed. I am double booked almost every day!
Attending BCCE? Check out details of our schedule and booth to find us there!
Q: Does an unopened can of soda pop float or sink in water?
A: It depends!
See if you can figure out what is happening in this twist on the classic floating-and-sinking soda can experiment.
In the June 6th, 2016 Chemical and Engineering News magazine put out by the American Chemical Society, C&EN talks with Deborah Blum, journalist and author: From the article’s description, ‘The Poisoner’s Handbook’ writer talks about the beauty of chemistry and why she wants people to know more about it.
Visualizations for Chemistry Teaching and Learning
The June 2016 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education is now available online to subscribers. Topics featured in this issue include: visualizations for chemistry teaching and learning, periodic table resources for teaching visually impaired students, biochemistry in the classroom and laboratory, spectroscopy in the laboratory, commentaries on analytical chemistry topics, resources for teaching, distilling the archives: guided-inquiry experiments.
Solution to Chemical Mystery #6 is presented. Also, concepts related to the chemical can crush demo are briefly discussed.
I met Jenelle Ball in Denver, CO at the Spring 2015 National ACS meeting. She is soft spoken and engaging. Jenelle’s biographical information is impressive. She earned a BS and MS in chemistry. While in graduate school, she recognized a passion for the process of teaching and learning which led her to teach high school chemistry. Most of her career has been spent at Chico Senior High School in Chico, CA. She was also fortunate to have the opportunity to take a rare sabbatical from high school teaching and earn a MA degree in teaching and learning.
Thinking Like a Chemist
The May 2016 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education is now available online to subscribers. Topics featured in this issue include: assessment & learning theories, science literacy & chemical information, engaging young chemists in chemistry, analysis of real-world samples, organic chemistry in the classroom and lab, computational chemistry in the laboratory, thermodynamics, kinetics projects, understanding hydrophobic & hydrophilic materials.
If you look at any chemistry textbook, you will see Lewis structures introduced long before electronic and molecular geometries. This makes sense since you need Lewis structures to determine molecular geometry. Unfortunately, research has shown that students often do not recognize that the purpose of drawing Lewis structures is not to create the structure itself but to use it as tool to understand the properties of the molecule (Cooper, Grove, Underwood & Klymkowsky, 2010).
Computer coding has been getting a lot of attention with the Hour of Code movement and President Obama’s recent “Computer Science for All” initiative. Just like it is no longer solely the job of the English teacher to teach language and communication skills, it is no longer solely the job of the computer science teacher to teach programming skills.