high school

The nail bottle demonstration¹ is one that many of us have conducted in our classes. To perform this demonstration, 2 – 3 mL of ethanol is placed into a plastic bottle that has two nails punctured into opposite sides of the bottle. After stoppering the bottle, a Tesla coil is touched to one of the nails.

My students and I intend to use a high-speed camera to film a variety of chemistry experiments in slow motion.  The first reaction we have decided to film is the “Whoosh Bottle”.  You can read more about this particular experiment in an article in Journal of Chemical Education h

Want to try an easy, yet interesting chemistry experiment this winter? Try this: Blow some bubbles into the outside winter air and catch one of the bubbles with a bubble wand. If it is cold enough outside, the bubble will freeze! 

I get excited when I see the outside temperature drop below 0°F (-18°C). This is not because I enjoy cold weather. It is because when the outside temperature gets this cold, I can conduct a particular experiment that I think is quite beautiful. The experiment is easy to carry out: boil some water and throw the hot water into the frigid air. Check it out below:

JCE Classroom Activities are a collection of over 100 chemistry experiments and demonstrations that can be carried out using simple materials found around the house or at grocery store and hardware stores. For example, JCE Classroom Activity #92 describes how to test for the presence of iodide in iodized salt using only water, iodized salt, 3% hydrogen peroxide, vinegar and liquid laundry starch.

Halloween is a great time of year to do experiments with fluorescence. In the video below, we experiment with some fluorescent yarn.

Have you ever seen the soap boat experiment? Check out the video below.  

This is a series of experiments, PhET Interactive Simulation activities, and clicker questions to relate macroscopic and molecular representations of homogenenous solutions. Graphing skills are also used. Materials Access to PhET Inteactive Simulations -

Looking for an easy, hands-on experiment to use in your classroom at the beginning of the school year? In the June, 2013 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education, Isao Ikemoto and Kouichi Saitou describe a simple experiment to demonstrate the electrolytic dissolution of copper ions from a copper electrode.