A variety of resources are available for chemistry faculty interested in incorporating lessons and activities around art and archeology. Find out what they are in this follow up post from the inaugural ChemEd X virtual Journal Club held April 2022.
Have you seen the rainbow candy experiment? It's a very simple experiment that involves pouring water into a plate that has M&M's candies or Skittles arranged in a pattern. Very curious shapes of sharply divided regions form spontaneously. How does this happen?!
Learn how to give pennies a beautiful, silvery-colored plating.
Learn how to form a blue-green copper compound on a penny, and then use that compound to make green flames. This is a great summer time activity for your next campfire!
Erica Jacobsen shares highlights from the October 2018 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education.
In my IB Chemistry class, my seniors were finishing up independent investigations for their Internal Assessment a few weeks ago when something cool happened. One of my students was using silver nitrate and potassium chromate for a titration. This is notable to the story here because the endpoint is marked by the formation of silver chromate as a precipitate, with a deep reddish color. I overhead the student showing his reaction to another student, with both of them commenting on the cool colors involved.
Toward the end of the school year we inevitably have disruptions to our normal instructional day. On one day in May, our classes were shortened to only fifteen minutes to accommodate for a series of school wide exams. On this day, I decided to choose some of my favorite chemistry-themed YouTube videos and share them with my students.
In this Activity, students use an oatmeal canister to make a pinhole camera, load it with black and white photographic paper, and create a paper negative using the camera. This interdisciplinary Activity combines chemistry and art.
In this Activity, students make and examine the characteristics of egg tempera paint. Instructors may also wish to emphasize the chemistry of paint and pigments, the history of the development of different types of paints, or to attempt to duplicate commercial paints as closely as possible. This Activity might be used to integrate chemistry into an art class.
In this Activity, students examine a piece of newsprint and recycle the paper to make a new sheet of paper that can be compared to other types of paper. They then use this experience, and information from Internet sites, to create a paper work of art. The Activity could be used as a cross-curricular topic in an art class.
