Latest articles, blogs, and events from the chemical education community

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.

I recently stumbled across a blog about the use of BCA (Before Change After) tables for stoichiometry written by Lowell Thomson.  I was thrilled to discover ChemEd Xchange!  I wanted to share my journey, spurred on by my students, into the extensive use of the BCA

For my students and me, the AP Chemistry exam does not mark the end of the school year. Once the AP exam is over, my students are exhausted but our class continues to meet for three more weeks. Each year we complete a qualitative analysis lab, but this year we finished earlier than I anticipated. For the first time all year, I have the luxury of time.

What am I doing to help kids achieve? How do I know when they are there? What is the evidence?

The Aufbau Principle: the (n + l) Rule

I have a confession to make: I don’t really understand how to correctly predict the electronic configurations (EC) of every element and ion. 

There has been a fair amount of discussion on ChemEd X within the last two years about how to teach stoichiometry.

In the lab, students are given a 1.5 gram samples of copper. The copper is taken through a series of five chemical reactions ending with the precipitation of solid copper. After the five reactions, students are asked to return their 1.5 gram samples of copper to the teacher.

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.

While attending a professional development session last year I was introduced to the Talk Science Primer, developed by the Inquiry Project and TERC.

What am I doing to help kids achieve? How do I know when they are there? What is the evidence?

A smartphone can be used in a remarkably simple and inexpensive way to teach your students about absorption spectroscopy and Beer’s Law. In short, light reflected off of colored construction paper is passed through a sample and detected by an RGB application on a smartphone.