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Fun and Quick Rates Lab (No pun intended...)

Chad Husting | Sun, 05/08/2016 - 19:37

I am facing what many teachers are facing. It is AP week, I am trying to continue "as usual" with doing labs and learning but this time of year is anything but "as usual". There is a rates lab we do this time of year which is a good lab, rather involved with a significant amount of set up and work. I got an idea for a slightly different rates lab from Bob Worley. I found a similar large scale version from Flinn Scientific. Thanks to Bob, I decided to do a microscale version.

 

Kinetics Review

Michael Morgan | Thu, 04/28/2016 - 13:08

In one of my last blog posts I wrote of how I sometimes enjoy ending a unit with a series of demonstrations and using them to elicit a dialog between the students and myself to check for understanding. It is always a fascinating experience to hear the misconceptions that many students have the day before the test.

An Unexpected Source of Inquiry-Based Lab Practicals

Erica Posthuma | Sat, 03/19/2016 - 16:54

Each spring my Local Section of The American Chemical Society (ACS) hosts a rigorous two part exam as part of the selection process for the The International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO). The lab practicals on the exams are presented as problems. No procedure is given. Students must use their chemistry knowledge and lab experience to devise a plan and solve the problem. The best part is that the released exams come with lists of materials and equipment, helpful hints to the proctors, and solutions! This is a great source for Inquiry-Based Lab Practicals.

Relative Reactivities of Metals

Dan Meyers | Thu, 12/17/2015 - 14:37

Last winter I watched a webinar put on by ACS and AACT called "NGSS in the Chemistry Classroom." As a result of watching that webinar, I took an activity that had NGSS Science & Engineering Practices (SEP) integrated into it and tried it out in class. In this activity, students are required to develop their own procedures and data tables.

A Quick and Dirty Stoichiometry Lab...Differentiation and Inquiry?

Chad Husting | Sun, 12/06/2015 - 19:10

There is a traditional stoichiometry lab I have done before. It involves adding dilute hydrochloric acid to sodium bicarbonate, boiling off the fluid and then getting the mass of the sodium chloride. Students then can solve the percent yield for the sodium chloride based on the amount of sodium bicarbonate they use. It is not a bad lab. Something about having hot ceramic watch glasses with acid just makes me a bit nervous. I am not sure where I got this new lab, but it has been one that has evolved over the years It is quick, dirty, relatively simple and uses over the counter (mostly) materials.