two-year college

M&Ms as Isotopes

Use Mega M&Ms, M&Ms minis, and regular M&M’s in this activity to examine the concept of isotopes and average atomic mass. The color of the M&M’s represent that they are the same element and have the same number of protons. The size represents, in a relative sense, the different numbers of neutrons.

Equilibrium Snowball Fight

This physical analogy relates to dynamic equilibrium and pits students against each other in a classroom-wide “snowball” fight. Not only is this activity great for building students’ conceptualization of dynamic equilibrium, it is also really fun!

Women Untold: Lawrence Tech Student-Produced Film Celebrates Diversity and Inclusion in STEM

Lawrence Technological University’s Marburger STEM Center recently collaborated with students enrolled in the Media Communications Program to develop a new 30-min student film, Women Untold, which celebrates the important contributions of three women of color in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

Measuring Surface Tension to Investigate Intermolecular Forces

Like most concepts in chemistry, intermolecular forces takes a bit of imagination and critical thinking to fully comprehend and apply when explaining a variety of situations. Though demonstrating the presence of these forces in a simple and explicit manner can easily be done, I wanted to change how I introduced IMFs a bit this year by focusing on a more data-to-concepts approach.