Supporting the Growth and Impact of Chemical Education

The March 2019 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education is now available online to subscribers. Topics featured in this issue include: nanochemistry; supporting the growth and impact of chemical education research; using technology to enhance student experience and understanding; promoting student engagement; teaching with models; experimenting with innovative labs.

Cover: Nanochemistry 

Silver elongated nanostructures are useful in a wide variety of electronic, optical, and antimicrobial applications. In A Simple Synthetic Approach To Prepare Silver Elongated Nanostructures: From Nanorods to Nanowires, Giovanni Ferraro and Emiliano Fratini present a laboratory experiment for the preparation and characterization of silver nanowires with different dimensions. The scanning electron microscopy micrographs at different magnifications (color added) on the cover show the formation of silver nanostructures after 10 min and their growth up to 60 min of reactions. The increase in nanostructure length is also associated with a notable change in the color of the solution during reaction. This captivating experiment reinforces students' understanding of the relation between the morphology of a material at the nanoscale and some macroscopic properties, such as the perceived color.

Other nanochemistry labs in the issue include:

Engaging Preservice Secondary Science Teachers in an NGSS-Based Energy Lesson: A Nanoscience Context ~ Deepika Menon and Mary Sajini Devadas

From Scrap to Functional Materials: Exploring Green and Sustainable Chemistry Approach in the Undergraduate Laboratory ~ Damodaran Divya and Kovummal Govind Raj

Safe One-Pot Synthesis of Fluorescent Carbon Quantum Dots from Lemon Juice for a Hands-On Experience of Nanotechnology ~ Elia M. Schneider, Amadeus Bärtsch, Wendelin J. Stark, and Robert N. Grass

Transformation of Silver Nanoparticles in Phosphate Anions: An Experiment for High School Students ~ Peter N. Njoki

Using Silver Nanoclusters as a New Tool in Nanotechnology: Synthesis and Photocorrosion of Different Shapes of Gold Nanoparticles ~ Ángel M. Pérez-Mariño, M. Carmen Blanco, David Buceta, and M. Arturo López-Quintela

Reverse Micelles as Templates for the Fabrication of Size-Controlled Nanoparticles: A Physical Chemistry Experiment ~ C. Harris, C. Gaster, and M. C. Gelabert

Supporting the Growth and Impact of Chemical Education Research 

The question of how to best continue Supporting the Growth and Impact of the Chemistry-Education-Research Community is discussed by group of chemical education research (CER) faculty representing a variety of backgrounds and experiences: Deborah G. Herrington, Ryan D. Sweeder, Patrick L. Daubenmire, Christopher F. Bauer, Stacey Lowery Bretz, Diane M. Bunce, Justin H. Carmel, Renée Cole, Brittland K. DeKorver, Resa M. Kelly, Scott E. Lewis, Maria Oliver-Hoyo, Stephanie A. C. Ryan, Marilyne Stains, Marcy H. Towns, and Ellen J. Yezierski. In this commentary they address: (1) How do we strategically grow the CER community, considering the multiple pathways by which people enter CER? (2) What can be done to make CER a more widely accepted and recognizable discipline?

Chemical Education Research feature articles found in this issue include:

Metrics and Methods Used To Compare Student Performance Data in Chemistry Education Research Articles ~ Michael R. Mack, Cory Hensen, and Jack Barbera

Goodwill without Guidance: College Student Outreach Practitioner Training ~ Justin M. Pratt and Ellen J. Yezierski

Helping Students to “Do Science”: Characterizing Scientific Practices in General Chemistry Laboratory Curricula ~ Justin H. Carmel, Deborah G. Herrington, Lynmarie A. Posey, Joseph S. Ward, Amy M. Pollock, and Melanie M. Cooper

Facilitating Argumentation in the Laboratory: The Challenges of Claim Change and Justification by Theory ~ Joi Phelps Walker, Andrea Gay Van Duzor, and Meghan A. Lower (this article is available to non-subscribers as part of ACS’s Editors’ Choice program.)

Decision-Based Learning: ″If I Just Knew Which Equation To Use, I Know I Could Solve This Problem!″ ~ Rebecca L. Sansom, Erica Suh, and Kenneth J. Plummer

Undergraduate Chemistry Students’ Conceptualization of Models in General Chemistry ~ Katherine Lazenby, Charlie A. Rupp, Alexandra Brandriet, Kathryn Mauger-Sonnek, and Nicole M. Becker

Macroscopic Observations of Dissolving, Insolubility, and Precipitation: General Chemistry and Physical Chemistry Students’ Ideas about Entropy Changes and Spontaneity ~ Timothy N. Abell and Stacey Lowery Bretz

Using Technology To Enhance Student Experience and Understanding  

Investigating the Effectiveness of Using Application-Based Science Education Videos in a General Chemistry Lecture Course ~ Roshini Ramachandran, Erin M. Sparck, and Marc Levis-Fitzgerald

Student-Generated Digital Tutorials in an Introductory Organic Chemistry Course ~ Brittany A. Hubbard, Grayson C. Jones, and Maria T. Gallardo-Williams

Using a Multitouch Book to Enhance the Student Experience in Organic Chemistry ~ Jimmy Franco and Brian A. Provencher

Is this Solution Pink Enough? A Smartphone Tutor to Resolve the Eternal Question in Phenolphthalein-Based Titration ~ Balraj B. Rathod, Sahana Murthy, and Subhajit Bandyopadhyay

Use of Augmented Reality in the Instruction of Analytical Instrumentation Design ~Joseph A. Naese, Daniel McAteer, Karlton D. Hughes, Christopher Kelbon, Amos Mugweru, and James P. Grinias

Promoting Student Engagement

Catalyze! Lowering the Activation Barriers to Undergraduate Students’ Success in Chemistry: A Board Game for Teaching Assistants ~ Stacey Brydges and Holly E. Dembinski

CASH: Collaborative Activity on the Sash of the Hood ~ S. Merwin Kennedy and Oliver Dreon

Demonstration of Composition Changes in a Distillation Column by Use of Bromophenol Blue Indicator ~ Sigvart Evjen, Coralie Petit, Mikael Hammer, Arne Lindbråthen, Gøril Flatberg, Sigve Karolius, Heinz Presig, and Anne Fiksdahl

Developing a Safe and Versatile Chemiluminescence Demonstration for Studying Reaction Kinetics ~ Abbas Eghlimi, Hasan Jubaer, Adam Surmiak, and Udo Bach

Synthesis of Green Fluorescent Protein Chromophore Analogues for Interdisciplinary Learning for High School Students ~ Shiho Numanoi, Makiko Hashimoto, Sonoko Hashimoto, Katsunori Kazawa, Ryo Sakaguchi, Kota Miyata, Rino Iwakami, Takahiro Mitome, Shintaro Anju, Ryo Shinotsuka, and Toru Oba

Teaching with Models

Open-Source Laser-Cut-Model Kits for the Teaching of Molecular Geometry ~ Natalie L. Dean, Corrina Ewan, Douglas Braden, and J. Scott McIndoe

Programmable Interlocking Disks: Bottom-Up Modular Assembly of Chemically Relevant Polyhedral and Reticular Structural Models ~ Aleksandar Kondinski and Tatjana N. Parac-Vogt

Introducing Electron Probability Density to High School Students Using a Spiral Drawing Toy ~ Mikhail Kurushkin and Chantal Tracey

Experimenting with Innovative Labs

Rhodium Rainbow: A Colorful Laboratory Experiment Highlighting Ligand Field Effects of Dirhodium Tetraacetate ~ Evan Warzecha, Timothy C. Berto, Chad C. Wilkinson, and John F. Berry

NMR Spectroscopy in an Advanced Inorganic Lab: Structural Analysis of Diamagnetic and Paramagnetic Ni(II) Schiff Base Complexes ~ T. Leon Venable

Bioinorganic Laboratory Experiment: Synthesis and Catalytic Activity of a Vanadium Haloperoxidase Model Complex ~ Steven M. Malinak, Jerald E. Hertzog, Julia E. Pacilio, and Deborah A. Polvani

Microwave-Promoted Synthesis of a Carbocyclic Curcuminoid: An Organic Chemistry Laboratory Experiment ~ Joseph J. Mullins and Allen F. Prusinowski

Call for Papers: Chemical Security Special Issue

A Special Issue on Chemical Security, with guest editors Andrew W. Nelson and Peter J. Hotchkiss of Sandia National Labs, has been announced. Deadline for submissions is September 9, 2019.

From the Archive: Examining Outreach Practices

Justin M. Pratt and Ellen J. Yezierski have written a series of articles that closely examine outreach practices and student beliefs about teaching and learning. This issue includes their article Goodwill without Guidance: College Student Outreach Practitioner Training and their recent articles include:

Characterizing the Landscape: Collegiate Organizations’ Chemistry Outreach Practices ~ Justin M. Pratt and Ellen J. Yezierski  (this article is available to non-subscribers as part of ACS’s Editors’ Choice program.)

College Students Teaching Chemistry through Outreach: Conceptual Understanding of the Elephant Toothpaste Reaction and Making Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream ~ Justin M. Pratt and Ellen J. Yezierski

“You Lose Some Accuracy When You’re Dumbing it Down”: Teaching and Learning Ideas of College Students Teaching Chemistry through Outreach ~ Justin M. Pratt and Ellen J. Yezierski

JCE: Supporting Growth and Impact in Chemical Education for 96 Years

JCE is now on its 96th volume, and with well over 1,000 issues of the Journal of Chemical Education to examine, you will always find something useful—including the articles mentioned above, and many more, in the Journal of Chemical Education. Articles that are edited and published online ahead of print (ASAP—As Soon As Publishable) are also available.

Atomic theory is a common topic throughout any introductory chemistry course. Regardless of the depth given to the various models and the evidence that led to their creation, it’s likely that Rutherford’s gold foil experiment gets at least some attention in your course.

For me, this topic had always been a bit more lecture-based. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed talking about the history and development of the atom, I didn’t like the feeling of being heavily reliant upon lecture. Additionally, I didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t providing students with an opportunity to generate their own evidence to support the concepts and models that I wanted them to develop. In this post, I propose a simple activity that gives students an opportunity to replicate Rutherford’s experiment through an analogy experiment that may allow for easier conceptualization of the experiment itself and provide additional support for model development.

Before I mention anything to my students about Rutherford’s experiment, I introduce them to an analogy experiment called Projectile Pennies. Though students don’t yet know what exactly this is an analogy to, they will shortly. It is not imperative that they understand the analogy yet anyway. The goal of the experiment is presented to them as follows:

Indirectly calculate the diameter of an unknown object by recording the number of times it is hit with objects of a known diameter.

The key idea here is to emphasize the fact that they will be determining the diameter of something indirectly. All students understand what they would do if I asked them to determine the diameter of a circular object placed in front of them—simply measure it. But what if they were not able to see the object? Obviously this complicates things a bit. This provides a nice opportunity to discuss how often (especially in chemistry) we rely on indirect evidence to help us inferences about the primary claim that is being made.

The experimental setup (figure 1) and the materials needed are simple. Each group receives two meter sticks, 20 pennies, a whiteboard, and an object with a circular bottom. Typically, I give the groups full water bottles to ensure they have enough mass, but you can use different items with a variety of sizes (film canisters, water filled beakers...). 

Figure 1: Side view of experimental setup (left). Top view of experimental setup (right).

One person in the group is designated as the “penny shooter.” While the other members of the group are getting set up, the penny shooter is told to wait out in the hall to avoid knowing the location of the unknown object. Ideally, we want the penny shooter to be unaware of the location of the object to limit the possibility of intentionally shooting pennies directly at the object. In this past, I have tried to decrease this bias even more by blindfolding the penny shooters and allowing them to wear headphones with music playing on full volume. Needless to say, students fight over who gets to be the penny shooter.

The other member(s) of the group have a few simple tasks before and during the experiment.

Getting Set Up

As seen in figure 1 above, students will establish the path by laying down two parallel meter sticks between 70 – 90 cm apart. Place the whiteboard on top of the meter sticks so it is just barely above the ground and can easily lean against a wall, desk, or lab table. Though the figure above suggests leaning it against a wall, it is easier for the group if the whiteboard can lean against something that does not allow pennies to come back unless they hit the unknown object. Once the whiteboard is secure, place the object somewhere behind the whiteboard. Do not place the object directly next to the meter sticks. Before they tell the penny shooter to come in, ensure that a penny can slide under the whiteboard and that the object cannot be seen from the shooter’s perspective.

During the Experiment

The penny shooter will essentially slide the penny toward the whiteboard (the penny should not leave the floor at any point). Once the penny shooter is ready to begin firing pennies, the other group members have a few simple tasks:

1. Record the number of times the object is hit.
2. Ensure a clear path for the pennies (i.e. if a penny hits and then comes back, remove it from the path).
3. Once a round is over, collect the pennies and hand them back to the penny shooter for the next round.

shooting.png

Figure 2: Experimental Setup—Photo taken in my classroom

Typically, I tell each group that they need to fire at least 100 pennies (5 rounds of 20). If we have enough time, I may ask for more but 100 is usually sufficient. Once they have reached the appropriate amount of pennies fired, they record their data and any measurements made in the following table:

Table 1: Organizing data from the experiment

table.jpg

Once they have all the necessary data, I provide them with the equation below, which will allow them to calculate the experimental diameter of their unknown object.

equation.jpg

Figure 3: Equation used to calculate experimental diameter of unknown object

Personally, I decide to give them the equation above simply to save time. However, I can imagine some teachers possibly adding a layer of depth to the investigation by having students derive the equation themselves. Once students have calculated the experimental diameter of the unknown object, they are asked to compare it to the known diameter. Though results will vary, several groups often get within 1 – 1.5 cm of the known diameter—pretty cool! From this experience, students gain insight as to how it is possible to determine the size of an object that cannot be seen.

example_data.jpg

Figure 4: Example data and calculation of diameter

Lastly, I provide four extension questions for each group to answer. Each question is meant to get students thinking about some of the inferences that will soon be made once we start talking about Rutherford’s experiment.

1. If you were the one firing the pennies while doing the same experiment and you noticed that some of your pennies actually bounced back toward you, how would you interpret this observation?
2. What would this suggest about the mass of the unknown object relative to the penny?
3. If you knew that your penny had a positive charge and you witnessed the same effect, what could you conclude about the charge of the unknown object?
4. Why did the majority of your pennies not hit the unknown object?

Once we eventually get to discussing Rutherford’s experiment, it is fun to see students make the connections between his experiment and our analogy. I will often hear things like, “Oh, so the alpha particles were just like our pennies!” and other statements describing the similarities between the nucleus and unknown object. Even the realization as to why the majority of pennies did not make contact with the unknown object being similar to the majority of alpha particles going straight through the gold foil is a cool one to hear. I believe having this experience prior to discussing Rutherford’s experiment provides a strong foundation for our students to more easily connect the rather conceptual findings from Rutherford’s experiment. I feel it is better than simply discussing the details of Rutherford’s experiment head on and assuming everyone will just “get it.” When teaching such abstract concepts in chemistry, the more connections we can allow our students to make with previous experience, the easier they will be able to assimilate such experiences with the appropriate concept.

In late 2012, a group of prominent researchers gathered in the mountains of Colorado for a momentous summit on science education (see image 1). Sequestered away for 5 days, these researchers debated one of the most critical facets of teacher knowledge.

By in large, their meeting went unnoticed by the teachers that they pondered, and even to this day, few understand the subject matter that they considered. The focus of this landmark summit was pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and the product of that 5-day gathering, was the most unified model of PCK in science education to date¹. So what exactly could be so important about this obscure-sounding type of knowledge? I argue that learning how to recognize your own PCK could help to launch your teaching skills to new levels.

Image 1: Mountains of Colorado, site of the PCK Summit in 2012

But first, what is PCK and why is it vital for teachers to consider it?

Teacher Knowledge

Two primary domains have been used to categorize teachers’ knowledge: knowledge of subject matter and knowledge of pedagogical techniques. In the late 19th century, teacher education and evaluation were largely focused on subject matter knowledge, but by the late 20th century, culture had shifted that focus to pedagogy. Some researchers, however, believed that neither subject matter knowledge nor pedagogical knowledge was sufficient to completely describe the knowledge of a teacher. Lee Shulman, one of the most influential educational psychologists of the 20th century, conceptualized a new form of teacher knowledge that he called pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)^2,3. For Shulman, PCK involved "the exchange of ideas. The idea is grasped, probed, and comprehended by a teacher… then the idea is shaped or tailored until it can, in turn, be grasped by students.” (ref 2, p 13). In essence, PCK describes how a teacher transforms subject matter into a form that students can use in constructing their own knowledge.

Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Developing PCK requires a certain level of subject matter knowledge, and teachers have a different understanding of subject matter than a person who specializes in that same field. A chemistry teacher and a ‘practicing’ chemist both have subject matter knowledge in chemistry; however, the knowledge is applied differently. This difference has been investigated by numerous researchers. For instance, John Dewey, another influential educational psychologist, wrote about it at the turn of the 20th century. He said, “For a scientist, the subject matter represents simply a given body of truth to be employed in locating new problems, instituting new researches, and carrying them through to a verified outcome. To him the subject matter of science is self-contained.” (ref 4, p 285-6). A teacher on the other hand “is not concerned with adding new facts to the science he teaches… he is concerned with the subject matter of the science as representing a given stage and phase of development of experience.” (ref 4, p 285-6). That is to say, teaching requires knowledge that goes beyond content knowledge, and it’s PCK that distinguishes a teacher from other subject matter experts. PCK is a teacher specific professional knowledge.

Figure 1: Teacher's knowledge

You Might Have PCK If...

At this point, you may be wondering if you have PCK. If you are a teacher, then you probably do, you just may not call it by its name. PCK is pretty recognizable when you see it. For instance, you know you have PCK if…

• you know the exact analogy that will help a student understand the definition of an acid and a base.
• you know the most common student misconceptions when solving stoichiometry problems.
• you know what students should learn after they have mastered converting the mole.
• you understand the unique culture of your students and how it can be integrated into your unit on thermodynamics.

Recognizing PCK

Even though PCK is fairly recognizable, researchers have disagreed when attempting to describe it completely. Nonetheless, in its most current characterization, PCK is thought to include 5 major components when in the context of science. These five components include⁵:

1. Orientations toward teaching science

This component pertains to a teacher’s beliefs when it comes to the goals and purposes of teaching science. For instance, which curricular material or instructional strategy work best at a certain grade-level?

2. Knowledge about science curriculum

This component refers to a teachers’ knowledge of how course content fits together. When learning a particular concept, what should the students learn before and after? What are the core concepts versus those that could be eliminated when faced with time constraints?

3. Knowledge of students’ understanding of science

This component concerns the way that students learn science. What makes a topic difficult for students to understand? What are the most common misconceptions?

4. Knowledge about assessment

This component connects the learning that should be assessed to the methods by which they are assessed. Is a multiple choice test always appropriate? Are some concepts better assessed by discussion?

5. Knowledge about instructional strategies for teaching science

This component is probably the most complex, and it elicits the topic-specific nature of PCK. It refers to the strategies that one utilizes when teaching certain subjects and topics within science. What types of metaphors and analogies are best to illustrate a concept? Which demonstrations are best to represent a certain phenomenon?

Figure 2: Components of PCK

Knowledge is Power

This review of PCK is in no way comprehensive. You could write whole books on this subject, and whole books have in fact been written.^1,6,7 I encourage you to learn more about the knowledge-base that makes you unique as a teacher. I for one, have profited immensely from studying PCK because I am now better equipped to reflect on and refine my practice. Since I know what PCK looks like, I can examine my practice for its evidence and target areas for improvement.⁸

If you want to start learning more about PCK, the books and articles cited in this post are a good place to begin.  Also, feel free to leave a comment, I would love to hear your thoughts on PCK or other forms of teacher knowledge and how they impact chemistry education.

References

1. Berry, A., Friedrichsen, P., & Loughran, J. (Eds.). (2015). Re-examining pedagogical content knowledge in science education. Routledge.
2. Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational researcher, 15(2), 4-14.
3. Shulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard educational review, 57(1), 1-23.
4. Dewey, J. (1902). The child and the curriculum (No. 5). University of Chicago Press.
5. Park, S., & Oliver, J. S. (2008). Revisiting the conceptualisation of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK): PCK as a conceptual tool to understand teachers as professionals. Research in Science Education, 38(3), 261-284.
6. Magnusson, S., Krajcik, J., & Borko, H. (1999). Nature, sources, and development of pedagogical content knowledge for science teaching. In Examining pedagogical content knowledge (pp. 95-132). Springer, Dordrecht.
7. Hume, A., Cooper, R., & Borowski, A. (2019). Repositioning Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Teachers’ Knowledge for Teaching Science.
8. Hassard, J., & Dias, M. (2013). The art of teaching science: Inquiry and innovation in middle school and high school. Routledge.

The periodic table of chemical elements is perhaps the most recognizable image in all of chemistry. Because it was discovered in 1869, the periodic table is celebrating its 150^th birthday this year.

As such, 2019 has been designated as the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements (IYPT) by the United Nations General Assembly and UNESCO. Organizations such as the American Chemical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry are sponsoring the International Year of the Periodic Table. You can visit the IYPT site to learn more about how to join in on the celebration. To share events on social media, use the hashtag #IYPT2019. To celebrate IYPT, I decided to write a song, sing it, and shoot an accompanying video to honor this great achievement of science:

Chemistry is everywhere from ChemEd Xchange on Vimeo.

If you would like to try singing this song for your students, the lyrics can be found in the Appendix. The background music in the video is from ProSource Karaoke. The clips of various experiments seen in the video were taken from a variety of videos on my YouTube channel, Tommy Technetium. LEGO images of the elements were taken from our LEGO Periodic Table that was built back in 2011 at Spring Arbor University in Michigan.

I would enjoy hearing about any activities that you might be doing to celebrate IYPT. Please do share your ideas in the comments. However, please keep to yourself any comments you might have about my singing ability. I already know I should be keeping my day job.

Appendix:

Download the pdf to print the lyrics.

chemistry_is_everywhere.pdf

chemistry_is_everywhere.pdf

Chemistry is Everywhere – to be sung to the tune of “I”ve Been Everywhere” by Johnny Cash

I sat down at my desk, so I could learn about some chemistry

When along came my brother, and he started making fun of me

“Why you wanna learn that stuff? Makes you look like a nerd!”

“Chemistry’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!”

He asked me what I found that was so interesting

And I said “Listen, this stuff is found in everything!”

Chemistry’s everywhere, man

Chemistry’s everywhere, man

It’s even in the air, man

It’s in your underwear, man

I know you man not care, man

Chemistry’s everywhere

There’s hydrogen helium lithium beryllium boron carbon nitrogen oxygenfluorine neon sodium magnesium aluminum silicon phosphorus sulfur chlorine argon potassium calcium scandium titanium vanadium (don’t hate me, man)

Chemistry’s everywhere, man

Chemistry’s everywhere, man

It helps to clean your hair, man

It’s in your underwear, man

I know you man not care, man

But chemistry’s everywhere

Chromium manganese iron cobalt nickel copper zinc gallium germanium arsenic selenium bromine krypton rubidium strontium yttrium zirconium niobium molybdenum technetium ruthenium rhodium palladium (Hi Ho!) silver….

Chemistry’s everywhere, man

Chemistry’s everywhere, man

Its atoms bond and share, man

Electrons like to pair, man

I know you man not care, man

But chemistry’s everywhere

Cadmium indium tin antimony tellurium iodine xenon cesium barium lanthanum cerium praseodymium neodymium promethium samarium europium gadolinium terbium dysprosium holmium (sing it again)

Chemistry’s everywhere, man

Chemistry’s everywhere, man

Lights up New York’s Times Square

Faster than Ahmed Zewail*

I know you man not care, man

But chemistry’s everywhere

Erbium thulium ytterbium lutetium halfnium tantalum tungsten rhenium osmium iridium platinum gold mercury thallium lead bismuth polonium astatine radon francium radium actinium thorium uranium neptunium (we’re almost done)

I know it’s hard to fathom

There’s a bunch more atoms

On the periodic table

But none of them are stable

I know you may not care, man

Chemistry’s everywhere…!

Why don’t you go a couple of days without drinking dihydrogen monoxide and come back here and tell me how boring chemistry is.

Why don’t you try starting your car or brushing your teeth without chemistry?

You can’t get away from it, bro

Chemistry’s everywhere!

*Winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on femtosecond chemistry

It is the time of year when POGIL workshops are being planned and registration is open. The facilitation teams are awesome and it is a very worthwhile experience, not just about POGIL, but about teaching, learning, and how we think about our students.

The POGIL Project itself is a great community of transformation that is very positive, accepting, and supportive. Faculty developers will benefit by learning more about this particular evolution of active and guided inquiry learning, and enhancing our ability to serve as a resource. Teachers will benefit by learning about themselves, their students, constructivism, and how to think about their content and pedagogy. My favorite part of attending and facilitating these workshops is that I get to have a lot of positive conversations with a variety of people about teaching and learning.

What is a POGIL workshop?

The POGIL® project offers a unique blend of teachers at both the secondary and post-secondary level the opportunity to collaborate together. POGIL® workshops create the sharing of ideas and resources across levels in a comfortable setting that helps foster connections that typically would not be made otherwise. Are you already familiar with basics of POGIL, perhaps you would like to learn more about writing your own POGIL activities in the activity writing track or perhaps you are looking to add more inquiry to your labs and can take the lab track, or perhaps you are experiencing difficulty as an instructor or have never received any formal training and would like to gain support through the facilitation track.

Where and When are the Workshops Being Provided?

Workshops will be offered at various locations across the country this summer. In the Northeast the location will be Simmons University in Boston, MA from July 16-18. In the Northwest the conference will be running from July 30th through August 1 at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. In the Southwest Vanguard University in Costa Mesa, CA will host the conference from July 23 through the 25th. Finally, the North Central period will host one in Columbus, OH from July 22 through 24. Each of these workshops cost $450 and include registration, materials, three lunches, and two dinners. On-campus housing is available for an additional fee which would also include breakfast. Two quarter graduate credits can also be obtained through Seattle Pacific University for an additional fee. Please check out the POGIL website to register.

What conference track is best for me?

Compare the conference tracks in table 1.

Table 1. Comparing tracks of the three different conferences

best_fit.png

What if I have already completed a POGIL regional workshop?

If you have been using POGIL activities in your classroom and would like to apply your knowledge and skills in new and innovative ways, consider attending the National Conference for Advanced POGIL Practitioners (NCAPP). At the NCAPP conference teachers come together to share new ideas, get targeted feedback, engage in in-depth discussions, interact with a diverse community of teachers, and gain a deeper mastery of the POGIL approach. Attendance at the National Conference for Advanced POGIL Practitioners is by application. All conference participants actively contribute to the planned program. Therefore, in addition to basic information about you and your POGIL experience, the application provides opportunities for you to summarize any work you would like to present in any of the various types of sessions. Applicants invited to attend the conference are also notified of accepted presentations. The next NCAPP will take place June 24-26, 2019 at Washington University in St. Louis. Registration is $500 and includes lunches and dinners. On-campus housing is $225 and includes breakfasts. Limited scholarships are available for NCAPP attendance.

What if I would like to write my own activities?

The Writers' Retreat will provide an opportunity for individuals or small teams to spend focused time on developing, writing, and improving POGIL activities with the mentorship of experienced POGIL author coaches. The 4-day agenda includes workshop sessions focused on activity authoring, feedback sessions, and ample time for writing and interacting with other authors and author coaches. The retreat is appropriate for authors in all content areas at both post-secondary and K-12 levels. If you have an interest in authoring high-quality POGIL activities, if you have already authored activities and would like to refine them, or if you are getting activities ready to submit for endorsement, the POGIL Writers' Retreat is a great opportunity for you to get feedback from colleagues and author coaches. This year's Writers' Retreat will take place July 29-August 1, 2019 at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. (Check in on Sunday, July 28. Check out on Thursday, August 1). Applications will be accepted until April 2 and applicants will be notified of acceptance by April 16. Attendance is limited and by application only. The cost of the Writers' Retreat is as follows: $575 registration (includes all materials and four lunches.) $275 housing (includes four nights and four breakfasts.) Dinner will be on your own. For an additional $165, you can register for 3 quarter graduate credits from Seattle Pacific University.

Can POGIL provide a conference for my institution?

For a fee, the Project will also provide additional workshops in your area, depending on availability of facilitators. If you have a specific date in mind, please enter that when you submit your request. We can also work with you to design an ongoing POGIL experience over the course of a year. Please contact Marcy Dubroff in the National Office for more information at marcy.dubroff@pogil.org. POGIL workshops often work well as professional development days or if you are seeking a meaningful teaching and learning experience for your faculty. You may request additional workshops in your region using this form, or you may request one of the other ways The POGIL Project might be of service to you.

Feel free to contact The POGIL Project or myself with questions. Hope you can attend one of these awesome professional development experiences!

Even after my kids move out of the house, the toy/game closet will remain. Sure, I could say it’s just for any grandchildren that may eventually come into our lives, but that’s not all. The closet also pays off in classroom possibilities. I’ve brought in a favorite science-related jigsaw puzzle or two to piece together with students during spare minutes, used Scattergories list categories for brain breaks, and more. The March 2019 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education led me to the closet shelves to retrieve one of my thrift store purchases: the Spirograph.

Kurushkin and Tracey connect this gear-based drawing toy to electron location in the student activity they describe inIntroducing Electron Probability Density to High School Students Using a Spiral Drawing Toy (available to JCE subscribers). They suggest using the Spirograph to introduce orbitals. Students draw a repeating pattern using specific pieces from the toy. Students share their observations, then the instructor helps them link the drawing pattern to one that they would see for the electron density of an sorbital. For example, students can see that particular areas of both the drawing and an electron density probability graphic are darker closer to the center. They might also notice that there is a white area in the center of both. This can lead to a discussion of how the motion of the pen in the drawing relates to the motion of an electron, to produce this particular pattern.

My in-home high school chemistry student and I played around a bit with the patterns. For our particular Spirograph version, the authors’ suggestion to “Use the first hole of the largest gear and the smaller outer ring to produce the desired pattern” (shown in the abstract) did not work. Eventually, we found a combo that made a similar reproduction (see our left drawing below, with ring/wheel information). We also looked at other patterns that could be compared (center and right in graphic). This also allows more than one student pair to use one Spirograph set, since it uses a different ring and wheel size. Once we had the combo down, it was quick, it was visual, and students were part of the “electron path” making process. You could picture an electron zipping around from side to side, although not in such a deliberate pattern.

Using the toy can be frustrating for students (and adults!) in trying to keep the wheel seated within the ring. At times it would pop out of the wheel and ruin the pattern. I found the best results with a slow and deliberate tracing. I liked the visual results of an ultra fine point Sharpie permanent marker, rather than pen or pencil. The longer metallic tip also held better in the wheel. As with all activities, try it yourself with your own equipment ahead of time.

spirograph_figure.jpg

Figure 1: Reused with permission from "Introducing Electron Probability Density to High School Students Using a Spiral Drawing Toy", Mikhail Kurushkin and Chantal Tracey. Journal of Chemical Education,96 (3), 500-502. Copyright 2019 American Chemical Society.

Looking Forward—Special Issue on Chemical Security

I’ve been aware of news reports of bombings, poisonings, and other attacks over the years. What I wasn’t aware of was the entire subset of chemistry related to it—chemical security. The topic will be the focus of a special issue, with Nelson and Hotchkiss announcing a Journal of Chemical Education Call for Papers: Special Issue on Chemical Security (available to JCE subscribers). The issue’s goals are “to (i) raise awareness of the potential for misuse of chemicals, equipment, and expertise; and (ii) provide a diverse collection of case studies, lesson plans, and reference materials that will enable educators to impart critical security information to current and future leaders of chemistry.” If you (or someone you know) has expertise in this particular area, please consider sharing resources and knowledge with educators through a submission. If you don’t, look for this special issue in the future—I know I will be.

More from the March 2019 Issue

Look for Mary Saecker’s post JCE 96.03 March 2019 Issue Highlights for an overview of this issue. You’ll find various themes pulled from the issue, including nanochemistry, using technology, promoting student engagement, teaching with models, and more.

What else have you used from the Journal in your classroom? Share! Start by submitting a contribution form, explaining you’d like to contribute to the Especially JCE column. Then, put your thoughts together in a blog post. Questions? Contact us using the ChemEd X contact form.

"In honor of the International Year of the Periodic Table this series of articles details the Element of the Month project developed by Stephen W. Wright (SWW), Associate Research Fellow at Pfizer Inc., and Marsha R. Folger (MRF), chemistry teacher (now retired) at Lyme – Old Lyme High School in Connecticut. Read The Element of the Month - An Introduction for an overview of the project and links to the other articles in the series." - Editor

The second element highlighted by our Element of the Month program is OXYGEN. By this point the students understand the Element of the Month program and have prepared a poster. A full class period is devoted to the discussion of oxygen and the accompanying demonstrations.

Occurrence in Nature 

Students will usually immediately respond correctly that oxygen is found in the atmosphere. When prodded “Where else?” they will answer that it occurs in water. Further “What else?” prodding usually leads to looks of puzzlement. They are likely to be unaware that most of the planet’s oxygen is to be found chemically combined in the rocks in the earth’s crust.

Uses

Clearly oxygen is essential for life! Further, it should be noted that combustion in its many forms powers human society, and that oxygen can be considered a global energy currency. One can derive energy from combustion reactions anywhere on the planet. However, oxygen is also one of the highest production volume commodity chemicals. It is used in the manufacture of steel (to remove sulfur, carbon, and phosphorus impurities that make iron brittle), paper, chemicals, rocket propellants, and in hospitals.

Figure 1: Container of oxygen gas

Physical Properties 

Students will know that oxygen is a colorless, odorless gas (figure 1). We ask the class if these properties can be used to identify oxygen. Often there will be agreement until we ask what other colorless, odorless, tasteless gases there might be. Very quickly the students will realize that carbon monoxide is colorless, odorless and tasteless.

Chemical Properties

We ask the class how oxygen is made in order to be used for all the purposes we described. Usually the immediate answer that is offered is electrolysis. We decline that answer and note that the energy costs of such a process are prohibitive. What is the cheapest way to obtain elemental oxygen? We lead the students to conclude that photosynthesis provides large amounts of oxygen and that air is a free feedstock. All that must be done is to separate the oxygen from the nitrogen. While this could be done by distillation of liquid air, membrane separation technologies are more modern and energy efficient.¹

Figure 2: Reactions yielding oxygen gas

Since we don’t have a membrane separation plant at hand, how might we prepare oxygen in the high school laboratory? Writing the reactions on the board, we note that there are several possible ways, and each method involves decomposing certain oxygen - containing compounds (see figure 2). For example, there is the thermal decomposition of red mercuric oxide that led Joseph Priestley to discover oxygen in 1774, the thermal decomposition of potassium chlorate (which is generally regarded as too dangerous to practice these days), the electrolysis of water (too slow), and the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. We note, however, that the decomposition of sodium chlorate is used in the oxygen generators in commercial aircraft.

Video 1: Electrolysis of a (neutral) sodium sulfate solution (accessed March 2019, subscription required). Derived from Jerrold J Jacobsen and John W. Moore. Chemistry Comes Alive! Vol. 1: Abstract of Special Issue 18, a CD ROM. Journal of Chemical Education 1997 74 (5), p 607-608. DOI: 10.1021/ed074p607.

At this point, if an electrolysis apparatus is available, the electrolysis of water may be started and permitted to continue through the remainder of the period (video 1 and 2). 

Video 2: Electrolysis of a neutral solution animation (accessed March 2019, subscription required). Derived from Jerrold J Jacobsen and John W. Moore. Chemistry Comes Alive! Vol. 1: Abstract of Special Issue 18, a CD ROM. Journal of Chemical Education 1997 74 (5), p 607-608. DOI: 10.1021/ed074p607.

We show a bottle of drugstore hydrogen peroxide and note that hydrogen peroxide has an expiration date. Why is that? We ask the class why the dark bottle is used and the students will correctly guess that it can be decomposed by light. How can we decompose it to oxygen gas? We solicit heat or the use of a catalyst as answers. We demonstrate the preparation of oxygen from hydrogen peroxide using some aqueous potassium permanganate solution as a catalyst, and remark that we will encounter catalysts later in the course.²

Figure 3: Test for oxygen gas

We note that the classic test for oxygen is the so-called glowing splint test, in which a wooden splint such as a coffee stirrer is ignited, blown out, and the glowing ember is placed into the oxygen gas that we just prepared (see figure 3).³ The ember bursts into flame. We ask the class what would happen with nitrogen or helium? Next we ask the class why this may not be a great test for a sample of an unknown gas. What would happen if we tried this test with propane or hydrogen? Next we generate additional portions of oxygen and demonstrate that oxygen violently accelerates the combustion of a piece of charcoal⁴ and of iron in the form of steel wool.⁵ A video showing the combustion of steel wool may be found in Tom Kuntzleman's ChemEd X blog post, Put a Spark in Your Stoichiometry Lesson. These two demonstrations are naturally invariably well received by the class and are repeated with the room darkened. With the room still darkened, the combustion of a match box striker strip (which contains red phosphorus) is then shown, which burns with a brilliant light.⁴ We put the lights on and show the class a "No Smoking" sign and ask why one might see signs like these in areas where oxygen is in use. Using a rolled up piece of tissue paper as a surrogate for a cigarette, we repeat the glowing splint test.

Figure 4: The ozone generator apparatus⁶ 

If time permits, we ask the class if they can name another form of oxygen, and solicit the allotrope ozone as the answer. We explain to the class what allotropes are and note that other elements such as phosphorus and carbon also form allotropes. We ask how ozone is formed, and students will usually correctly answer that it is formed from diatomic oxygen in the presence of high energy UV light or electrical energy, such as lightning. We prepare ozone using a high voltage discharge and show that it is more reactive than diatomic oxygen by passing the ozonized oxygen through a flask of potassium iodide solution (see figure 4).⁷ No formation of iodine is observed until the high voltage discharge is turned on.

References and Notes 

1. A brief discussion of the properties of liquid air and the concentration of oxygen from liquid air may be found in Tom Kuntzleman's ChemEd X blog post, Collection of and Experiments with Liquid Air. See also Abstract 2-9 in Alyea, Hubert N. Tested Demonstrations in Chemistry, 6th ed.; Journal of Chemical Education: Easton, PA: 1965; pp 9.
2. Oxygen may also be generated from hydrogen peroxide and laundry bleach according to the following equation: NaOCl (aq) + H2O2 (aq)  O2 (g) + H2O (l) + NaCl (aq) An excess of hydrogen peroxide is used to ensure complete reaction of the sodium hypochlorite. A ratio of 2 teaspoons (10 mL) of laundry bleach and 3 teaspoons (15 mL) of 3% hydrogen peroxide for each 4 ounces (about 120 mL) of volume in the test bottle works well, generating enough oxygen to displace the air from the bottle without adding too much liquid to the bottle. The bleach must be added in small portions (1 to 2 teaspoons or 5 to 10 mL) at a time, to control the bubbling that occurs. See Wright, S. W. J. Chem. Educ. 2003, 80 (10), 1160A-B.
3. See Conant, James Bryant; Black, Newton Henry New Practical Chemistry; Macmillan: New York, 1940; pp. 23.
4. See Conant, James Bryant; Black, Newton Henry New Practical Chemistry; Macmillan: New York, 1940; pp. 34.
5. Summerlin, Lee R.; Borgford, Christie L.; Ealy, Julie B. Chemical Demonstrations: A Sourcebook for Teachers Volume 2, 2nd ed.; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1988; pp 43. 
6. The ozone generator is set up with oxygen gas entering the glass three neck flask and passing through steel wool and out the exit tubing. The steel wool is merely an electrode surface. The center neck of the flask is closed with a stopper through which a wire is passed. The wire is in electrical contact with the steel wool inside the flask, while the other end of the wire is bonded to the ring stand. This results in the steel wool, and the inside of the flask, being electrically grounded. To generate ozone, the Tesla coil is turned on and the probe is touched to the under side of the glass flask. This creates a high voltage static field on the outside of the glass which is negated by the electrically grounded steel wool inside the flask. It is this invisible static field that converts the oxygen to zone. The probe is not brought into contact with the wire, the steel wool, or the ring stand at any time. It is only brought into contact with the glass surface. The percent conversion of oxygen to ozone is very low, less than one percent, but it is plenty to be able to smell the ozone and to produce a positive reaction with KI solution. Note that the exit tubing must be made of plastic tubing since rubber tubing reacts with ozone. The Tesla Coil (sold by Flinn Scientific) is used to ignite the wool. The high voltage probe is also sold as a vacuum leak detector made by Electro Technic Products and sold by Fisher Scientific. (Note that this is a high voltage discharge apparatus and not a combustion apparatus.)  
7. Ransford, J. E., J. Chem. Educ., 1951, 28 (9), 477. See also Abstract 2-33s in Alyea, Hubert N. Tested Demonstrations in Chemistry, 6th ed.; Journal of Chemical Education: Easton, PA: 1965; pp 58.

One of the things that I enjoy most about teaching is designing curriculum - introducing new activities and experiences for my students and myself. I am able to set up a flow of learning that I hope will lift my students to higher levels of thinking, deeper understanding, and an appreciation for the relevance of chemistry in our society. Even now, at the beginning of the second half of the school year, I look for ways to improve my curriculum. But without great resources, one can’t create an excellent curriculum.

In the resources offered by AACT, I have found the building blocks for an excellent curriculum. Part of what makes these resources so fabulous is the fact that they have been written by other teachers, so they can be used as written. The student handouts and teacher notes with answer keys make them easy to implement in any classroom. For an experienced teacher, the resources are also easy to incorporate into the curriculum slot that you are developing. All of the supporting documents come in a Microsoft Word version that can be easily edited. Many of the newer resources are aligned with NGSS and the AP resources are aligned to the six big ideas from the College Board. This can save a lot of time!

The number of resources is another real plus in developing your curriculum. There are nearly 700 resources (labs, activities and demonstrations) available through the AACT website. These resources are grouped by grade band: elementary, middle school and high school. The resources are then subdivided into topics such as chemistry basics, acids & bases, and atomic structure. One can search the resources by topic, type of resource and specialty area such as Advanced Placement.

In addition to the classroom resources on the website, AACT also offers webinars throughout the school year on various topics related to teaching in the chemistry classroom. One recent example is the webinar given by Tom Kuntzleman, who is also an associate editor for ChemEd X. In this webinar, Tom shared a huge number of experiments and demonstrations. Not only did he share his video of each one, he also included an article from the Journal of Chemical Education that gives further background and details on each experiment. This is a real treasure chest of resources that is safely stored on the AACT website for members to continue to access.

Chemistry Experiments with Familiar, Inexpensive, and Easily Obtained Materials

WEBINAR (62 minutes) recorded January 30, 2019

Presenter: Tom Kuntzleman, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Spring Arbor University, Spring Arbor, MI

There are more webinars coming that are sure to offer fabulous resources and I encourage you to check out the full schedule: https://teachchemistry.org/professional-development/webinars

All of the resources are the result of teachers sharing with other teachers. This incredible gift gives teachers the ability to develop excellent curriculum for students. If you are not yet a member of AACT, you can explore unlocked resources here: https://teachchemistry.org/about-us/unlocked-resources

Through the e-mail newsletter, AACTconnect, you can get notices about upcoming resources, events, and opportunities. I hope you will check out our website or connect with us through social media (Twitter& Facebook). I enthusiastically invite you to get involved.

Thank you for the opportunity to share information about AACT with the ChemEdX community. I wish everyone a fabulous second half to your school year and hope you will choose to incorporate a new resource or two into your curriculum.

Jenelle Ball

AACT Immediate Past President

www.teachchemistry.org

This year I started asking students to complete a simple assignment at the end of every unit that has come to be known as “Careers in Chemistry”. The purpose of the assignment is to expose students to career options that use Chemistry that they may not know much about.

Figure 1: Careers in Chemistry Guidelines

Students have come to the point where they know it is coming and expect it as we approach the end of a unit. I think quite a few students actually appreciate the assignment as it is not very difficult or time consuming to complete (i.e. easy points), and at the same time expands their view of paths they could follow that involve Chemistry. It also helps some students realize that Chemistry class is not just a place where we talk about and imagine stuff we can’t see, but the things we learn in Chemistry are actually used in real life in lots of different ways. The assignment instructions/guidelines I have been giving to my students this year for the assignment are shown in Figure 1. Careers we have done this year include: Medical Technologist, Forensic Scientist, Patent Attorney, and Chemical Engineer. Just recently a couple students in one of my classes jokingly suggested our next one should be “Chemistry Teacher” :). The assignment provides good bang for the buck as it is simple, easy to implement, and helps provide an answer to “Why Chemistry class?”.

In the freshman Chemistry laboratory course at Nicholls State University, tutorials (administered as Moodle quizzes) are used as pre-lab assignments. The tutorials consist of logically sequenced background information interspersed with several questions (multiple choice, numeric, short answer types) to check for understanding and were developed using Moodle’s embedded-answers Cloze question format. The text and graphical information provide a sufficient basis to answer all the questions. However, YouTube videos are embedded for students who may need additional help. Usage data from Moodle and YouTube analytics provide a wealth of information that can be used to gain insight on the effectiveness of the tutorials. The tutorials could be easily adapted for flipped instruction in high school and college lecture courses.

Typical Laboratory Instruction 

The teaching of introductory Chemistry laboratory courses is very similar at most colleges. Experiments are scheduled after the pertinent topics are covered in the corresponding lecture class. To prepare students and help them understand the results of the experiment, they are required to complete a written pre-lab assignment before class. Class time typically involves a short pre-lab lecture where the instructor gives an overview of the experiment, demonstrates proper technique, and addresses safety issues. Students then perform the experiment and complete a post-lab report after leaving the laboratory.

There are challenges associated with the aforementioned typical scenario. For example, in cases where the laboratory and lecture classes are not integrated, students who have taken the corresponding lecture class in an earlier semester may not remember the topic well. Manual grading of written pre-lab assignments takes time and delays feedback to the student. Pre-lab assignments tend to be short, which makes mindless cheating (i.e., copying of answers) quite easy. This defeats the purpose of a pre-lab assignment. Sufficient time must be allotted to allow all students to complete the experiment. Thus, instructors cannot spend too much time away from actual lab work for pre-lab lecture or post-lab discussion without sacrificing the breadth of topics/skills covered in the course.

Redesigning the Pre-Lab Assignment

We have started using Moodle to fulfill the goal of pre-lab assignments. A learning management system with an electronic assessment system, such as Moodle, is a very useful tool for facilitating the delivery and grading of pre-lab assignments. Our strategy is to make the pre-lab assignment easy and engaging enough for students to consider doing it a worthwhile investment of their time and effort. It serves as an introduction to students who have not been exposed to the subject and a review for those who have. Obviously, since the activity is not proctored, it is impossible to prevent cheating. We, in fact, do encourage student collaborations but urge students to consider it as a learning opportunity. The assignments count for 5% of the overall grade and achieving a high score is relatively easy. We allow multiple attempts for each assignment before the deadline (set before class starts); only the attempt with the highest score is counted towards a student’s grade. A one-week extension is given to allow students to improve their score, but they must wait 3 days between attempts; before the original deadline, no waiting is required between consecutive attempts. The only feedback provided before the extended deadline is whether each answer is correct or incorrect; the correct answers are provided after the extended deadline. There is no time limit (other than the deadlines) for each attempt.

The design of the tutorials implements explanatory questioning, one of three general principles that underlie methods shown to produce positive effects on learning, based on a comprehensive review of cognitive and educational psychology research literature by Roediger and Pyc (2012). According to Roediger and Pyc, explanatory questioning “involves students monitoring their learning and describing, either aloud or silently (i.e., to themselves), some features of their learning” and “slows reading (relative to simply zipping through the text, as some students do).”¹

lab_quiz_questions.png

Figure 1: Screenshot of a question from Molecular Structure tutorial.² 

There are numerous platforms for implementing online tutorials. We found the Moodle quizzing tool to be more than adequate and quite easy to use. It takes about as much time to create the Moodle tutorials as it does to manually grade stacks of papers. Revisions, for subsequent uses, require even less time. Figure 1 shows a cropped screenshot of one of the questions (using Moodle’s embedded-answers Cloze question format) that a student sees in the tutorial on molecular structure. A PDF printout of the entire 15-question tutorial (with 341 embedded answers) is available in the pdf: 

pre-lab_quiz_-_molecular_structure.pdf

pre-lab_quiz_-_molecular_structure.pdf

screenshot_of_question.png

Figure 2: Screenshot of question shown in Figure 1 in Edit mode.²

Figure 2 shows how the question is encoded using Moodle’s WYSIWG editor. Boxed sections of Figure 2 illustrate how simple answer and multiple choice questions can be encoded. A PDF printout of the editing page shown in Figure 2 is available in the citations. The code {1:SA:%100%6~%100%six} means that a simple answer worth one point (1:SA) is expected and a response of “6”or “six” would be given full credit (%100%). The code {1:MC:%100%H and C~H and N~C and N} means that a multiple choice question worth one point (1:MC) will be shown as pull down menu with H and C, H and N, and C and N as choices; answer of H and C is given full credit. It is possible to specify full credit for more than one correct answer, as well as partial credit for other answers. Simple answers can be made case-sensitive by using SAC instead of SA, as in {1:SAC:%100%Na}; in this case, an answer of “NA” or “na” will be considered incorrect. Numeric answers can also be encoded. For example, {1:NM:%100%18.0:0.1} means that the expected answer is 18.0 with a tolerance of 0.1; an answer between 17.9 and 18.1 would be considered correct.

Figure 3: Screenshot of Question 2 of Measurements tutorial.³

Results

A wealth of insights can be obtained from using Moodle and your own YouTube videos. Figure 3 shows a screenshot of Question 2 of the Measurements tutorial. We created the embedded short video (about 2 minutes long) and YouTube analytics for January 2018 are shown in Figure 4. A spike in views from Louisiana was observed during the week when the tutorial was assigned. A total of about 96 students were enrolled in four laboratory sections and 85 views, with an average 80% retention rate, were recorded during that time period. The retention rate is the percentage of the entire video that played when the video was accessed.

Figure 4: YouTube analytics for embedded video shown in figure 3

We have since found a wide variability in the viewership rates for embedded videos; a careful analysis should provide insight into the need for the videos. A low viewership could indicate that the students already know the material well or that the textual information given in the tutorial are clear and easy to understand and apply. A high viewership could indicate the need to improve the textual information, or that a video might be necessary to effectively convey the information. In the case of the videos in the Measurements tutorial, the high viewership rates for video embedded in Question 2 that the the physical rationale behind significant digits is a concept that are somewhat difficult for students. A video on counting significant digits, embedded in Question 1 of the tutorial, had a significantly lower viewership rate, presumably because teachers spend more class time on this in several science courses since high school. It is therefore likely that students have already mastered this information and thus felt little need to view this video.

Figure 5: Partial screenshots of student performance from Moodle (Molecular Structure Pre-Lab Assignment).

Figure 5 shows partial screenshots of student performance data from Moodle for the Molecular Structure pre-lab assignment. The tutorial consisted of 15 multi-answer questions, which cover Lewis Structures, VSEPR, and orbital hybridization. The maximum possible 341 points for the 15 questions is scaled down to a grade of 10. Only scores for the highest attempts are shown in the Figure; the mean grade was 8.13 but the median was significantly higher (9.33). In the corresponding laboratory activity, done early in the semester, students are assigned molecules for which they draw Lewis structures, create wireframe and computer models, and present their work to the class. The topic is covered toward the end of the pre-requisite lecture class, which most of the students completed in the previous semester. In this particular case, it appears that students who tried to complete the assignment in one sitting spent about 1-3 hours and that it is fairly easy to get a high score on the first try. Later attempts typically take less time as students simply need to reenter answers marked correct and focus on the ones they missed in the previous attempts. Most students completed at least one attempt the night before the deadline (February 6, 2009 at noon). The best performing students only needed one attempt. Only a few students tried to improve their grades with additional attempts during the one-week extension.

Broader Impacts

The tutorials can also be useful as pre-class assignments for flipped lecture courses. An important key to successfully flipping lecture courses is being able to hold students accountable for reading or watching pre-assigned materials. Complementing the tutorials with randomly-varied assessments to enhance flipped lecture courses will be the subject of another paper. Another broader impact is the ease with which these tutorials can be shared with a large number of like-minded teachers. Moodle is a widely-used open-source learning platform. Even if one’s institution does not use Moodle, free Moodle hosting services can be utilized. The author highly recommends moodlecloud.com, which provides free hosting (limited to 30 users) and relatively inexpensive upgrade options. A growing question bank, which includes the tutorials described here, is maintained by the author at chemistry.moodlecloud.com. Temporary user accounts can be set up upon request for a teacher interested in examining the tutorials as well as the randomly-varied assessments that utilize the question bank. The question banks are available (for free) from the author (glenn.lo@nicholls.edu) as XML files that can be imported into any Moodle course site. The author would be glad to conduct a webinar (one-on-one or to a group of teachers) in setting up a free course site on moodlecloud.com, as well as create a series of how-to videos for using Moodle.

Conclusion 

Using Moodle-administered, video-enhanced tutorials is a very convenient and appears to be an effective way to achieve the goal of pre-lab assignments. For the apparent benefits, developing the tutorials is certainly well worth the investment in time and effort.

Citations

1. Roediger HL III and Pyc MA (2012). Inexpensive techniques to improve education: Applying cognitive psychology to enhance educational practice. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 1, 242-248.

2. Information about how to interpret a Lewis structure is provided before the embedded video; see Figure 2. A PDF "printout" of the entire 15-question tutorial (with 381 embedded answers) is available in the pdf.
   

   editing_an_embedded_answers_cloze_question.pdf

   editing_an_embedded_answers_cloze_question.pdf
3. Screenshot of Question 2 of Measurements tutorial. YouTube analytics for embedded video (https://youtu.be/cbCqJc1hAw0) are shown in Figure 4.

With Earth Day approaching, you might want to try out the experiment published in the Journal of Chemical Education.¹ It outlines a fantastic way to demonstrate the warming influence that atmospheric CO₂ has on our planet. I followed the procedure and offer a video of the results.²

Notice how this experiment connects to a description of the greenhouse effect: Visible light from the sun (modeled by the lamp) easily penetrates the atmosphere (modeled by the air in the cup) and warms the earth (modeled by the black rocks in the cup). The earth, like any warm body, emits infrared (IR) light. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (such as H₂O, CO₂, and methane) absorb this emitted IR light, slowing its escape from the planet. This has a warming effect. If earth had no greenhouse gases in its atmosphere, the IR light would escape more quickly, allowing for a cooler planet. Increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from fossil fuels use (modeled by the input of CO₂ through the tube from dry ice) therefore warms the atmosphere.

It is of note that this experiment features the measurement of temperature in a system that is open to the atmosphere. This allows for a direct demonstration of the warming of our atmosphere due to the addition of CO₂ alone. Conducting the experiment in a system open to the atmosphere eliminates the interference from additional warming that occurs in sealed systems due to trapped air being conductively warmed.

If desired, this set up allows students to try out inquiry-based explorations. For example, what happens if different gases are sent into the system? I would be interested to see if exhaled breath causes warming in this system (exhaled breath contains roughly 4-6% H₂O and 4% CO₂, both of which are greenhouse gases). If trying this experiment, students would have to be sure to cool the exhaled breath (which is presumably at 37^oC) to room temperature prior to sending it into the air in the cup. To do so, students could immerse a coiled tube into a large bath of water at room temperature. Students could then exhale into one end of the tube, which would send the exhaled breath into the coil where it would be cooled to room temperature. The other end of the tube would of course be positioned to transfer the cooled exhaled breath into the cup.

You can learn more about this experiment in the February 2019 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education.

Reference

1. D’eon, Faust, Browning, and Quinlan. Exploring the Phases of Carbon Dioxide and the Greenhouse Effect in an Introductory Chemistry Laboratory, J. Chem. Educ., 201996 (2), 329-334.

2. Tom Kuntzleman, Does increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere cause warming? Tommy Technetium YouTube Channel (accessed 3/27/19).

Supporting the Growth and Impact of Chemical Education

The March 2019 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education is now available online to subscribers. Topics featured in this issue include: nanochemistry; supporting the growth and impact of chemical education research; using technology to enhance student experience and understanding; promoting student engagement; teaching with models; experimenting with innovative labs.

Cover: Nanochemistry 

Silver elongated nanostructures are useful in a wide variety of electronic, optical, and antimicrobial applications. In A Simple Synthetic Approach To Prepare Silver Elongated Nanostructures: From Nanorods to Nanowires, Giovanni Ferraro and Emiliano Fratini present a laboratory experiment for the preparation and characterization of silver nanowires with different dimensions. The scanning electron microscopy micrographs at different magnifications (color added) on the cover show the formation of silver nanostructures after 10 min and their growth up to 60 min of reactions. The increase in nanostructure length is also associated with a notable change in the color of the solution during reaction. This captivating experiment reinforces students' understanding of the relation between the morphology of a material at the nanoscale and some macroscopic properties, such as the perceived color.

Other nanochemistry labs in the issue include:

Engaging Preservice Secondary Science Teachers in an NGSS-Based Energy Lesson: A Nanoscience Context ~ Deepika Menon and Mary Sajini Devadas

From Scrap to Functional Materials: Exploring Green and Sustainable Chemistry Approach in the Undergraduate Laboratory ~ Damodaran Divya and Kovummal Govind Raj

Safe One-Pot Synthesis of Fluorescent Carbon Quantum Dots from Lemon Juice for a Hands-On Experience of Nanotechnology ~ Elia M. Schneider, Amadeus Bärtsch, Wendelin J. Stark, and Robert N. Grass

Transformation of Silver Nanoparticles in Phosphate Anions: An Experiment for High School Students ~ Peter N. Njoki

Using Silver Nanoclusters as a New Tool in Nanotechnology: Synthesis and Photocorrosion of Different Shapes of Gold Nanoparticles ~ Ángel M. Pérez-Mariño, M. Carmen Blanco, David Buceta, and M. Arturo López-Quintela

Reverse Micelles as Templates for the Fabrication of Size-Controlled Nanoparticles: A Physical Chemistry Experiment ~ C. Harris, C. Gaster, and M. C. Gelabert

Supporting the Growth and Impact of Chemical Education Research 

The question of how to best continue Supporting the Growth and Impact of the Chemistry-Education-Research Community is discussed by group of chemical education research (CER) faculty representing a variety of backgrounds and experiences: Deborah G. Herrington, Ryan D. Sweeder, Patrick L. Daubenmire, Christopher F. Bauer, Stacey Lowery Bretz, Diane M. Bunce, Justin H. Carmel, Renée Cole, Brittland K. DeKorver, Resa M. Kelly, Scott E. Lewis, Maria Oliver-Hoyo, Stephanie A. C. Ryan, Marilyne Stains, Marcy H. Towns, and Ellen J. Yezierski. In this commentary they address: (1) How do we strategically grow the CER community, considering the multiple pathways by which people enter CER? (2) What can be done to make CER a more widely accepted and recognizable discipline?

Chemical Education Research feature articles found in this issue include:

Metrics and Methods Used To Compare Student Performance Data in Chemistry Education Research Articles ~ Michael R. Mack, Cory Hensen, and Jack Barbera

Goodwill without Guidance: College Student Outreach Practitioner Training ~ Justin M. Pratt and Ellen J. Yezierski

Helping Students to “Do Science”: Characterizing Scientific Practices in General Chemistry Laboratory Curricula ~ Justin H. Carmel, Deborah G. Herrington, Lynmarie A. Posey, Joseph S. Ward, Amy M. Pollock, and Melanie M. Cooper

Facilitating Argumentation in the Laboratory: The Challenges of Claim Change and Justification by Theory ~ Joi Phelps Walker, Andrea Gay Van Duzor, and Meghan A. Lower (this article is available to non-subscribers as part of ACS’s Editors’ Choice program.)

Decision-Based Learning: ″If I Just Knew Which Equation To Use, I Know I Could Solve This Problem!″ ~ Rebecca L. Sansom, Erica Suh, and Kenneth J. Plummer

Undergraduate Chemistry Students’ Conceptualization of Models in General Chemistry ~ Katherine Lazenby, Charlie A. Rupp, Alexandra Brandriet, Kathryn Mauger-Sonnek, and Nicole M. Becker

Macroscopic Observations of Dissolving, Insolubility, and Precipitation: General Chemistry and Physical Chemistry Students’ Ideas about Entropy Changes and Spontaneity ~ Timothy N. Abell and Stacey Lowery Bretz

Using Technology To Enhance Student Experience and Understanding  

Investigating the Effectiveness of Using Application-Based Science Education Videos in a General Chemistry Lecture Course ~ Roshini Ramachandran, Erin M. Sparck, and Marc Levis-Fitzgerald

Student-Generated Digital Tutorials in an Introductory Organic Chemistry Course ~ Brittany A. Hubbard, Grayson C. Jones, and Maria T. Gallardo-Williams

Using a Multitouch Book to Enhance the Student Experience in Organic Chemistry ~ Jimmy Franco and Brian A. Provencher

Is this Solution Pink Enough? A Smartphone Tutor to Resolve the Eternal Question in Phenolphthalein-Based Titration ~ Balraj B. Rathod, Sahana Murthy, and Subhajit Bandyopadhyay

Use of Augmented Reality in the Instruction of Analytical Instrumentation Design ~Joseph A. Naese, Daniel McAteer, Karlton D. Hughes, Christopher Kelbon, Amos Mugweru, and James P. Grinias

Promoting Student Engagement

Catalyze! Lowering the Activation Barriers to Undergraduate Students’ Success in Chemistry: A Board Game for Teaching Assistants ~ Stacey Brydges and Holly E. Dembinski

CASH: Collaborative Activity on the Sash of the Hood ~ S. Merwin Kennedy and Oliver Dreon

Demonstration of Composition Changes in a Distillation Column by Use of Bromophenol Blue Indicator ~ Sigvart Evjen, Coralie Petit, Mikael Hammer, Arne Lindbråthen, Gøril Flatberg, Sigve Karolius, Heinz Presig, and Anne Fiksdahl

Developing a Safe and Versatile Chemiluminescence Demonstration for Studying Reaction Kinetics ~ Abbas Eghlimi, Hasan Jubaer, Adam Surmiak, and Udo Bach

Synthesis of Green Fluorescent Protein Chromophore Analogues for Interdisciplinary Learning for High School Students ~ Shiho Numanoi, Makiko Hashimoto, Sonoko Hashimoto, Katsunori Kazawa, Ryo Sakaguchi, Kota Miyata, Rino Iwakami, Takahiro Mitome, Shintaro Anju, Ryo Shinotsuka, and Toru Oba

Teaching with Models

Open-Source Laser-Cut-Model Kits for the Teaching of Molecular Geometry ~ Natalie L. Dean, Corrina Ewan, Douglas Braden, and J. Scott McIndoe

Programmable Interlocking Disks: Bottom-Up Modular Assembly of Chemically Relevant Polyhedral and Reticular Structural Models ~ Aleksandar Kondinski and Tatjana N. Parac-Vogt

Introducing Electron Probability Density to High School Students Using a Spiral Drawing Toy ~ Mikhail Kurushkin and Chantal Tracey

Experimenting with Innovative Labs

Rhodium Rainbow: A Colorful Laboratory Experiment Highlighting Ligand Field Effects of Dirhodium Tetraacetate ~ Evan Warzecha, Timothy C. Berto, Chad C. Wilkinson, and John F. Berry

NMR Spectroscopy in an Advanced Inorganic Lab: Structural Analysis of Diamagnetic and Paramagnetic Ni(II) Schiff Base Complexes ~ T. Leon Venable

Bioinorganic Laboratory Experiment: Synthesis and Catalytic Activity of a Vanadium Haloperoxidase Model Complex ~ Steven M. Malinak, Jerald E. Hertzog, Julia E. Pacilio, and Deborah A. Polvani

Microwave-Promoted Synthesis of a Carbocyclic Curcuminoid: An Organic Chemistry Laboratory Experiment ~ Joseph J. Mullins and Allen F. Prusinowski

Call for Papers: Chemical Security Special Issue

A Special Issue on Chemical Security, with guest editors Andrew W. Nelson and Peter J. Hotchkiss of Sandia National Labs, has been announced. Deadline for submissions is September 9, 2019.

From the Archive: Examining Outreach Practices

Justin M. Pratt and Ellen J. Yezierski have written a series of articles that closely examine outreach practices and student beliefs about teaching and learning. This issue includes their article Goodwill without Guidance: College Student Outreach Practitioner Training and their recent articles include:

Characterizing the Landscape: Collegiate Organizations’ Chemistry Outreach Practices ~ Justin M. Pratt and Ellen J. Yezierski  (this article is available to non-subscribers as part of ACS’s Editors’ Choice program.)

College Students Teaching Chemistry through Outreach: Conceptual Understanding of the Elephant Toothpaste Reaction and Making Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream ~ Justin M. Pratt and Ellen J. Yezierski

“You Lose Some Accuracy When You’re Dumbing it Down”: Teaching and Learning Ideas of College Students Teaching Chemistry through Outreach ~ Justin M. Pratt and Ellen J. Yezierski

JCE: Supporting Growth and Impact in Chemical Education for 96 Years

JCE is now on its 96th volume, and with well over 1,000 issues of the Journal of Chemical Education to examine, you will always find something useful—including the articles mentioned above, and many more, in the Journal of Chemical Education. Articles that are edited and published online ahead of print (ASAP—As Soon As Publishable) are also available.

I remember my alarm waking me up early on a Saturday in December. Realizing my kids were still asleep, I pressed snooze so I could steal a few extra minutes of rest before the breakfast cheerios and cartoon chaos began. Before I could doze off again, my phone received an email notification. It was score day for National Board Certification.

I hesitated to open the email and log into the scoring system. On one hand, I was confident that I provided clear and convincing evidence of strong teaching and growth as a professional. But on the other hand, what if the National Board didn’t agree and I didn’t pass? How would I tell my family? Do I have it in me to try for certification again? My journey to National Board Certification was like a Hero’s Journey plotline (Figure 1) used in popular movies like Star Wars¹. With the aid of various mentors, I was able to navigate my National Board Certification journey with all of its highs and lows to transform into a stronger teacher than I had ever thought possible. In my next few blog posts, I hope to break down the National Board Certification process in Chemistry to help others in their own Hero’s Journey to National Board Certification.

National Board Certification is considered by some as the gold standard for professional certification in K-12 education. Updated in 2016, National Board Certification requires teachers to demonstrate expertise in five teacher-developed core propositions² through subject area standards³. Board certified teachers provide clear, consistent, and convincing evidence of the five core propositions. They show they understand their students’ varied backgrounds to help them meet high expectations. They demonstrate subject area expertise and their ability to teach their content to diverse learners. They prove how they ensure academic growth by managing, monitoring, and adapting to student progress. They continually reflect on their craft and learn from their experiences. Finally, they provide evidence of how they are active members of learning communities. When applying for National Board Certification, candidates have up to three years to successfully complete four components that include an assessment and three portfolios analyzing classroom video clips, student work, and student assessment samples.

The Hero’s Journey starts with a call to adventure. I have been called to the adventure of National Board Certification several times. Many of my chemistry teacher friends that I respected and aspired to be like were National Board Certified and encouraged me to do the same. My state and school district offered yearly stipends and compensation for National Board Certification. While National Board Certification was on my teacher bucket-list, I could never pull the trigger and get started. I refused the call due to insecurities and fear of the time commitment with a young family at home. Fast forward a few years when my teaching license was about to expire. After weighing my options, National Board Certification was the most cost-effective route to renewing my teaching license at the time. So, while still nursing my third child, I decided to finally accept the call to adventure and start my National Board Certification journey.

Figure 1: The Hero’s Journey graphic⁴

In the Star Wars movies, when Luke (the hero) is called to adventure, Obi-Wan Kenobi serves as his mentor, teaching him about the Force. As I embarked on my adventure, I found many mentors along the way. These mentors were invaluable and consisted of current National Board Certified Teachers and other National Board candidates like myself. The National Board works hard to take into account every teacher’s unique working environment and respects the art of teaching – there is not one “right way” to teach students. Mentors do not have the answers to National Board Certification, but they did provide priceless guidance, a sounding board, reassurance, and a critical eye to make sure my evidence was clear, convincing, and consistent. They helped bring out the best in me and helped me persevere through challenges. If you are considering National Board Certification please consider finding a mentor or another teacher to collaborate with during this process. Check with your local teacher’s union or educational agency to find a National Board cohort to work with.

Along the Hero’s Journey, there are many tests, challenges, and temptations. Luke faced many battles in the Star Wars movies, just as I did in the classroom. You can’t just “talk the talk” in your portfolio submissions, you have to “walk the walk.” Many times, I felt like I knocked a lesson out of the park, only to find out while reviewing the video footage or assessment data that I was far from successful. I really had to take an honest look at the reality of my teaching, not just my rosy perception I had of it. I had to take a hard look at my shortcomings. I sought out resources and advice from my mentors to help me improve and transform my teaching. Just as Luke was tempted by the Dark Side, there were many temptations that made it easy to stray from my journey. Time with family and friends were the hardest to say “no” to. To be honest, temptation also presented itself in the form of Netflix, watching my son’s soccer game outside in freezing rain, and cleaning toilets. Anything was better than typing up my portfolio entries. But eventually, it all got done.

Through all the hard-fought battles, I became a better teacher than I had ever imagined. This is what made National Board Certification the best professional development for me. Before the National Board Certification process, I felt that the student discourse in my classroom was very good. However, after analyzing the video footage I realized it was not the case. I unintentionally dictated and undermined organic student discourse. I worked hard to change this by establishing new classroom norms, modeling discussions, and re-training myself on how I respond to student discussions. This was not a quick fix. I tried many different methods over two months before I saw the results I wanted to see. This is just one example of many that occurred along my journey. The first English Channel swimmer Captain Matthew Webb said, “Nothing great is easy.” This quote certainly applies to National Board Certification. This journey helped me find success with students I had not found success with in the past. I am better able to meet the needs of my gifted students, give my students a voice, and create stronger community connections. The National Board website contains research⁵ on the effectiveness of National Board Certified Teachers in their classrooms. My personal experience aligns with their findings. I am definitely am more effective as a teacher now compared to before I started the National Board adventure.

Now we arrive at the part of the Hero’s Journey where the unknown becomes known. Did I achieve National Board Certification? On that fateful Saturday in December, I finally got up the courage to look at my National Board scores. It nearly took my breath away as I saw that I passed and was a National Board Certified Teacher. I woke up my husband to tell him the wonderful news. I don’t know who was more relieved to hear I passed – my husband or myself! I woke up my kids to tell them I passed. I spent the rest of the day giddy, spontaneously dancing, and calling up everyone I knew to share my accomplishment. It was all worth it.

Currently, I am in the “return home” part of the Hero’s Journey until I get called back to adventure when I need to renew my certification in five years. I am excited to see what new things I will learn about myself and my teaching as I go through the (much shorter) renewal process. But until then, I will continue improving my craft for my students. For those of you that are interested in starting your own Hero’s Journey to National Board Certification in Chemistry, I will be breaking down each of the four components to National Board Certification in my next few posts.

Citations

1. Hero’s Journey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey (accessed 4/1/2019)

2. National Board Publication: What Teachers Should Know and Be Able to Do (accessed 4/1/2019)

3. National Board Certification Science Standards (accessed 4/1/2019)

4. Esbjorn Jorsater [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)] (accessed 4/1/2019)

5. Research on the Effectiveness of National Board Certified Teachers https://www.nbpts.org/research/ (accessed 4/1/2019)

This is a new activity for chemistry students who struggle with the correlation between changes in enthalpy, temperature, entropy, and the Gibbs free energy of a system; which relies on an analogy that most students will be familiar with.

A common topic in chemistry discussion groups and forums is about the use of the terms “spontaneous reaction” versus “thermodynamic favorability”. Recently, more and more instructors have steered away from using the word “spontaneous” to describe systems that have negative Gibbs free energy values. When I asked my second year students (Advanced Placement) what they thought of when they heard the term “spontaneous” they mentioned the words “immediate” and “quick.” And when I asked them to use it in regards to reactions, the students mentioned “the reaction always starts right away”, and “without outside intervention.” These ideas are not always true of reactions that have negative Gibbs free energy values. These reactions are not all going to be instantaneous and may never have a measurable product formed due to activation energy requirements or other outside variables. However, when I asked the students what they thought of when I mentioned the terms “thermodynamic favorability” the students responded with “reactions that could happen with changes in heat” and “a reaction’s best case scenario.” The shift from “spontaneous” to “thermodynamically favorable” could alleviate students’ misconceptions about free energy. In addition, students often mistakenly confuse the fact that spontaneous starts with the letter “s” and the symbol for entropy is “S”. Unfortunately, those students often use the word spontaneous to describe entropy. Therefore, for this activity, I have chosen to use the terms “thermodynamically favorable” to describe reactions that were once called “spontaneous”. The activity was designed to help students generate an understanding of Gibbs free energy and its dependency on enthalpy and entropy changes of the system. As an AP Chemistry Reader myself, I have seen hundreds of papers that prove that this is a very difficult challenge for most students.

Student’s Background Knowledge

In AP chemistry, I start the topic of Gibbs free energy in March. It is part of my second to last unit of the year about thermodynamics (followed by electrochemistry and then exam review). This activity can also be used in first year courses (see *note below). Before using this activity, my students had shown proficiency in calculating and explaining changes in enthalpy (heats of formation, Hess’ Law, calorimetry, bonds broken minus bonds formed calculations) and entropy (entropy of formation calculations and explanations). This activity is designed to help students understand which systems are the most favorable and which systems are unfavorable. The activity also shows how certain systems have competing enthalpy and entropy favorability and how Gibbs free energy can be evaluated in such systems. Gibbs free energy can be a very abstract idea for students. The analogy can help tie the Gibbs free energy concept to a more tangible and real world scenario.

The Analogy

The analogy is based on the idea that students would like to create plans to have fun with their friends. As heat can be added or removed from a system, thus being endothermic (+) or exothermic (-), money can be saved in a bank account (+) or spent (-). In a favorable scenario, students will have money to spend, much like a reaction can release heat. Highly entropic systems have many degrees of freedom, or a variety of microstates (+), which could be analogous to students having many different options to have fun with their friends. Systems that have a decreasing entropy (-) will have less degrees of freedom much like students who may be grounded and not free to socialize. An increase in temperature will allow particle to move with more kinetic energy, much like the availability for transportation to bring students from home to their plans. The temperature will directly affect the value of entropy. As temperature is increased on a system, the particles move with more kinetic energy and can have more degrees of freedom or microstates, much like if the students have more means of transportation (most cannot drive!), their options for plans increases. There are four general scenarios:

• The most favorable scenario: Students will have money to spend, transportation, and many options for their plans analogous to exothermic enthalpy changes, high temperatures (which I later show could be unnecessary), and increasing entropy changes.
• The first semi unfavorable scenario: Students have money to spend but no options (grounded). Therefore, the increase of transportation will be nothing but a nuisance or taunting that makes the situation more unfavorable. This is analogous to having an exothermic reaction that is decreasing entropy and more favorable at low temperatures (This needs some facilitation! See the “Facilitation Strategies” section below).
• The second semi unfavorable scenario: Students don’t have money to spend but they have available opportunities to plan their day. If transportation is available the opportunities are more attainable. This is analogous to endothermic reactions with increasing entropy that require high temperatures to make the reaction favorable.
• The most unfavorable scenario: Students will not have money to spend (saving it), no transportation, and no options for their plans (grounded) analogous to endothermic enthalpy changes, low temperatures (which I later show could be unnecessary), and decreasing entropy changes.

Facilitation Strategies

Don’t overcomplicate the analogy. Students may try to bait you with things like “Well, if I am grounded I could just shop online, play video games, etc. and my entropy could still be increasing” or other loopholes. Start the lesson out with the intention of learning this difficult topic of chemistry and to take the questions at face value. Be available for your students. If they have questions they can raise their hand and you can answer with follow up questions and hints. Try not to give away the answers, but instead coach them toward the right direction. I have my students in teams of three to four and use POGIL activities with roles and process skill development very often. My students are trained on how to approach this type of activity (for POGIL training see www.POGIL.org). Key icons will alert students when they are seeing an important concept. The stop sign icon means the students should stop once they have completed that question and call the teacher over to check in. I check one student’s answers (specifically key questions) to ensure the team is on the right path. I may ask follow up questions and clarify parts that need to be discussed. Each team may arrive at a stop sign at different times, so always have another activity or practice problems ready for the students to do when they complete the assignment. My students worked on practice calculations when they were done with this activity.

The first section (page 1, ending with the first stop sign), was fairly simple. My students completed that section in about ten minutes with little help needed. If they struggled with question five, I merely pointed out the bold word “release” and they often said “it’s negative!” because we have discussed that with exothermic reactions all year. If a team worked very well, I often asked them to explain to me why they chose the term “negative” to describe Gibbs free energy in question 5 to see what their misconceptions may have been, if any.

The second section (page 2) required a little bit of guidance during question 6b. I reasoned with a few of my students by saying “If you had money to spend but were grounded, and all your friends were taunting you with rides and opportunities to hang out, wouldn’t you be even more upset than if they had left you alone?” That usually resonates with them and helps them decide that increase in transportation will actually be unfavorable in that scenario (much like exothermic reactions that are decreasing entropy will be unfavorable as temperature increases). The students seemed to be able to jump right from the analogy to the real thermodynamic values in question 8 with no issues. A few students needed guidance on question 9c only because they realized there were two indeterminate scenarios and were unsure if they should write about both.

The third section (starting on page 3) was a breeze. Most of my students are not mathematically inclined, but due to scaffolding the questions, and the experience with the calculation of products minus reactants for both enthalpy and entropy previously, the students worked through calculations very well. Question 14 stumped a few students so I modeled the idea of collision theory requiring proper orientation and energy and they were then able to remember that reactions require sufficient activation energy (we had covered this a few units ago in kinetics). My students were able to finish sections 1-3 in one class period (42minutes). We ended the first period with the question, “Why is it so difficult for Ms. Drury to find endothermic reactions that decrease entropy?” The students needed some thinking time and eventually we resolved that endothermic reactions tend to involve the breaking of bonds or forces which would generally increase the entropy of a system due to more molecules or gaseous particles being formed. I asked them to review the equations to make sure they were confident about the variables to be used: ∆G⁰=∆H⁰-T∆S⁰, products – reactants, and ∆G⁰=-RTlnK. In addition, I asked them to try to research endothermic reactions that increase in entropy.

The final section (questions 15-20) was completed on the following day. The students had no trouble relating Gibbs free energy and the equilibrium constant (we have just finished the acids, bases, and salts unit so they are generally well versed in equilibrium). A few teams were stumped about question 20. I referred back to the model of Y + 2F ↔ YF₂ and asked, “When is the reaction given above favorable? How can I make that reaction unfavorable?” Those questions usually helped them answer the question.

Assessment

After the activity, I gave the teams a team quiz. I don’t quiz as a team all the time. Team quizzes usually occur after team activities but before large assessments. I find that team quizzes boost team morale (they see it as a challenge and something different than an individual quiz) and the team quizzes set an expectation for working in the team, in that, the students know they are responsible for understanding the content because they have to pull their weight on the quiz. The students also continue learning during team quizzes. The students are forced to have an open dialogue about the content in order to arrive at a team consensus and argumentation between students helps the students defend their answers and gain confidence with the material. The quiz is closed notebook (but open brain!) and they had 15 minutes to complete the quiz. The average score was 95%! Some misconceptions were ironed out for questions 2 and 3. I included a question that we had not seen before where the students had to solve for temperature and they performed really well! The next two classes were devoted to problem solving including practice AP free response calculations and multiple choice questions.

Conclusions

I have been teaching Advanced Placement chemistry for 11 years and honors chemistry for 14 years. This is the first year I have tried this approach with Gibbs free energy. The students seemed to have a much better understanding of the relationship between enthalpy, temperature, entropy, and Gibbs free energy. The students are making less mistakes with their unit conversions, and are much more proficient at explaining changes in enthalpy, entropy, and free energy. The unit assessment was given two days after the assignment with stellar results. I used the same exam as last year in order to compare the strategies. This year my students performed 15% better than my students last year. I value this improvement and plan to implement this activity next year as well. The analogy might be too childish or out of character for some teachers, but I like to put myself in my students’ shoes and find any way to help them feel comfortable with the material. I hope you can find value in the activity. I would love to read your successes, suggestions, and ideas on the ChemEdX discussion board!

*Note: I also introduce the concept of Gibbs free energy to my first year honors students without specific calculations. I have not tried this activity with my first year students yet, however, I anticipate only using the first two pages of the activity next year.

Did you know there is a simple test you can do to see if an alkaline battery is fresh or dead?^1,2 All you need to do is bounce the bottom of a battery onto a hard, flat surface. If the battery is fresh it won’t bounce very well. If the battery is dead, it will bounce very high. Check it out in the video.³

Guess what causes this difference in bouncing ability between fresh and dead batteries? Chemistry, of course!

The chemical reaction that powers batteries involves the conversion of zinc metal, manganese (IV) oxide and water into zinc oxide and manganese oxide hydroxide:^1,2

Zn(s) + 2 MnO₂(s) + H₂O(l) à ZnO(s) + 2 MnOOH(s)        Equation 1

It turns out that ZnO is a very bouncy material. Indeed, adding ZnO to the interior of golf balls increases the distance they travel when they are hit.⁴ Thus, the formation of increasing amounts of ZnO as a battery is used increases the bounciness of the battery. Notice that water is also consumed as a battery is used. This also probably contributes to the increased bounciness of a dead battery in the following way: when a dropped battery strikes a surface, its kinetic energy of motion can be more easily dispersed throughout a liquid than a solid. Thus, the water present in a fresh battery leaves less kinetic energy for rebound. This water is consumed as the battery is used, causing the interior of a dead battery to be more-solid like. Less liquid water available in a dead battery does not allow for such kinetic energy to be dispersed, leaving more energy for rebound.

In addition to differences in bouncing ability, it is quite easy to compare differences in the contents of fresh and dead batteries. To do so, try cutting open a fresh and a dead battery with a pair of PVC pipe cutters to inspect the differences between the two (SEE CAUTION BELOW). You will likely note that a fresh battery oozes a bit upon cutting it open, while a dead battery does not. This observation is consistent with the fact that water is consumed as a battery operates (Equation 1). You might notice that the inner portion of a fresh batter appears to be more silvery in color, while the inner portion of a dead battery appears more whitish grey. These observations are consistent with the conversion of Zn to ZnO as a battery operates: zinc is a silvery metal, while zinc oxide is white.

It is also possible to use a simple chemical test to distinguish between the presence of Zn and ZnO in fresh and dead batteries. The inner portion of fresh batteries reacts with hydrochloric acid to produce a gas. Again, that’s because the inner portion of fresh batteries contains a lot of unreacted Zn metal:

Zn(s) + 2HCl(aq) à ZnCl₂(aq) + H₂(g)                     Equation 2

However, the inner portion of a dead battery contains mostly ZnO, which produces no gas upon reaction with hydrochloric acid:

ZnO(s) + 2 HCl(aq) à ZnCl₂(aq) + H₂O(l)               Equation 3

Because of this difference, one would expect larger gas H₂ production when mixing the inner portion of fresh batteries vs. dead batteries with HCl(aq).

The video below illustrates how to carry out these particular experiments.

I hope you consider trying out these experiments in your classroom. Drop a note in the comments if you try them out for your students. Happy experimenting!

CAUTION:Wear safety goggles and gloves. The experiments described herein are only intended for Zn-MnO₂ alkaline batteries. Do not attempt to cut open any other type of batteries as the contents very likely contain hazards not described here. The contents of Zn-MnO₂ alkaline batteries contents are caustic. Use caution when cutting open as the contents may spray. If the battery appears to be getting very warm when being cut open, stop cutting immediately and promptly remove the PVC cutter from the battery.

References

1. Bhadra, S.; Hertzberg, B. J.; Hsieh, A. G.; Croft, M.; Gallaway, J. W.; Van Tassell, B. J.; Chamoun, M.; Erdonmez, C.; Zhong, Z.; Sholkapper, T.; Steingart, D. A. The relationship between coefficient of restitution and state of charge of zinc alkaline primary LR6 batteries. J. Mater. Chem. A.2015, 3, 9395–9400.

2. Hall, J. M.; Amend, J. R.; Kuntzleman, T. S. Experiments To Illustrate the Chemistry and Bouncing Ability of Fresh and Spent Zinc–Manganese Oxide Alkaline Batteries. J. Chem. Educ.2016, 93, 676-680.

3. Kuntzleman, T. S. Chemistry of the Battery Bounce Test, Tommy Technetium YouTube Channel, published 2/1/2019. (accessed 3/27/19).

4. Sullivan, M. J.; Nesbitt, R. D. Golf Ball Comprising a Metal, Ceramic, or Composite Mantle or Inner Layer. 2003, U.S. Patent 6,612,939 B1.

In case you missed it, this post is the second installment in a series called “SBG Hacks”. The purpose of this series is to share with you some of the small things I do in my classroom to make my standards-based grading system run smoothly. The first post was about my “Choose Your Own Adventure” quizzes.

Today’s post is a big one: my automated reassessment system. Before I jump into how I currently run my reassessments, let me give you some insight into what created a need for this system in the first place. When I first started my SBG journey, I was a first year teacher and an organized reassessment system was not at the top of my priority list. My “system” was students would line up at my desk and I would write them a question off the top of my head on a post-it note.

My desk roughly looked like this by the end of the day (figure 1).

Figure 1: My desk before creating an automated system.¹

Obviously this system was not ideal and I needed to make some changes. Luckily that summer I was introduced to the Google Sheets add-on, Autocrat. If you read Ben Meacham’s post on how he simplifies his retake process, my solution takes it one step further.² Buckle in, this post gets pretty technical.

Like Ben’s approach, it starts with a Google Form. I try to keep my Google Form as simple as possible to make it accessible for students (see figure 2).

Figure 2: Google form - Reassessment Request

My ninth grade physical science form is slightly more complex because I teach the co-taught sections so I have a large number of students with IEPs and 504s. Most of my students with IEPs have a small group instruction period with an intervention specialist where they can take their reassessment so I give them a spot on the form to indicate that. The only difference in the forms is the question “do you have a small group instruction period?” which will send students to a different page on the form depending on their answer. If “yes”, the student is directed to input their SGI information, if “no”, the student specifies when they are coming in to reassess. I share this information only to show that Google Forms can be very versatile depending on your needs.

Once you have your form, you need to make a Google Docs template that matches the information entered on your form. Let me introduce you to merge tags. Every time you want Autocrat to fill in information submitted in the Google Form, just put merge tags (<<>>) around the info. See (figure 3) for an example.

Figure 3: Google Docs template - Autocrat Merge Tags

Anything with a merge tag around it will be filled in by Autocrat from the information the student submits on the form. Anything not in a merge tag will remain the same on every reassessment generated. My template generates the top half of my reassessment page. I put the reassessment question below the dotted line. You can have as much or as little information at the top of your reassessment page as you like. I keep it to the student’s name, the target they are reassessing and when they are coming in to reassess. I have the “got it”, “almost”, “not yet” off to the side because it makes grading easier if I can just quickly circle the grade a student earns.

Okay, you have mastered Google Forms and Google Docs, now off to Google Sheets! Open up the Google Sheet associated with your Google Form by viewing the responses to your sheet and clicking the spreadsheet icon (see figure 4).

Figure 4: Open the Google Sheet by viewing the responses and clicking the spreadsheet icon.

Next, go to the “Add Ons” drop down menu and select “Get Add Ons.” Search for “Autocrat” and add it to Google Sheets (see figure 5).

Figure 5: Add-On dropdown menu for Google Sheet 

Now when you go to the “Add Ons” drop down menu, Autocrat should be an option. Go ahead and open it. Create a new job and give it a name. The next step is to find the template you made and attach it. The most important step is to match your merge tags with the question from your form that provides the information (columns in your Google Sheet). See figure 6.

Figure 6: AutoCrat Map Source Data to Template 

When you click "Next", it will ask you to make a file naming convention. NOTE: your merge tags here need to match your column headers in your spreadsheet EXACTLY (not the same merge tags from your template). To keep it simple, I make my naming convention <>:<>.

The second most important step is to designate a folder for all your generated reassessments to live. You will never visit this folder but it keeps your Google Drive from getting inundated with new Docs. I always create a new folder just for reassessments for a specific prep or class.

You can skip step 6, “add dynamic folder reference” and step 7, “set merge conditions.”

The next step is optional. I have Autocrat email my students a receipt that also serves as a hall pass if they are leaving study hall. See figure 7 to see what my screen looks like. 

Figure 7: AutoCrat Share Docs and Send Emails

Note that you need to use the exact column headings in your merge tags here again. Make sure you do not share the Google Doc with students because they will be able to see the reassessment when you type it in. This is why I share the PDF because it only has the header filled in. If you do not want Autocrat to email students, just skip this step.

For step 9, I always have my job run on a trigger. This means that when a new form is submitted, it will automatically generate the reassessment. If you do not have a trigger, you will have to open Autocrat and manually run it every time you go to make reassessments.

Hit “SAVE” and your reassessment bot is done! Let’s try it out!

Go to your Google Form and fill it out like you are a student. Now go to your spreadsheet. If you set your form to run on a trigger, give it a second and your should see Autocrat add some columns to your spreadsheet. I hide all of the Autocrat columns except “link to merged doc” to reduce spreadsheet clutter.

If Autocrat is not running, open it from your “Add Ons” menu and click the “play” button to run it manually. Click into your newly made merge document by using the link Autocrat generates. If everything went according to plan, your template should be filled in with the information you typed into the form.

Now that you have the technical stuff set up, let’s talk workflow. Every morning, I come in and open my reassessment spreadsheets (I have one for every prep I teach). I open all of my new reassessments (I highlight completed ones in green to keep track) and organize them by target. I then insert a question below the dotted line in each of the new reassessments. If I was a more organized person, I would have a question bank to do this from. I am not that organized so I just come up with questions off the top of my head or copy/paste from an old worksheet or a quiz from a previous year.

I then print all of the new reassessments and bring them to my reassessment station by the door to my classroom (see figure 8). Each class has a folder. Students come in throughout the day or before or after school, find their reassessment, complete it, turn it in and leave. Students understand that reassessing is a privilege and if they become a distraction to the class in my room at the time, they will lose that privilege. Students take it seriously because they care about their grade and they know a reassessment can drop their grade just as easily as it can raise it.

Figure 8: Reassessment Station in my classroom

It takes me 10-15 minutes to make reassessments at the beginning of the day and 10-15 minutes to grade them at the end of the day, depending on how many are submitted. This school year I have made 865 reassessments.

The technical side of this might seem daunting, but once it is up and running, you rarely even need to open Autocrat at all. Need a bit more help? Check out this video tutorial I created for a district that I was doing PD with recently: AUTOCRAT TUTORIAL  

Next up in SBG Hacks: Homework!

CITATIONS

1. Min An, "Sticky Note Lot", Pexels (accessed 4/4/19)
2. Ben Meacham's ChemEd X blog post, A Simple Tool to Help Make the Retake Process Less Chaotic, May 2018. (accessed 4/4/19)

This lab activity is designed to allow students to explore the use of indicators. It serves as an introduction to acids, bases and pH.

Every time we do a lab, students are assigned a role within their group (see figure 1). I have role descriptions on cards and depending on the lab and the class I either have them self assign or I assign the roles within each group. I have the students identify the role that they played on the lab sheet they turn in. See the Teacher Document PDF for a printable set of cards.

Figure 1: Student roles for laboratory work

Students will determine their own procedure steps given three prompts and the materials they are provided. If you provide the student with a digital document, they can add photos for each problem. See figures 1-3 for student photos for Problems 1 and 2. Additional student photos are shown in the Teacher Document found in the Supporting Information. I allow students to take pictures on their phones and add labels using snapchat/instagram, but if you are not comfortable with that or have a no cell phone policy you can have them bring them up to show on a document camera/projector.

Table 1: Common Acid-Base Indicators¹

^{STUDENT PHOTOS} 

Problem #1

Figure 1: Methyl Orange results in pH 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11

Figure 2: Phenolphthalein in pH 5, 7, 9, 11

Problem #2

Figure 3: Universal Indicator results in pH 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13

Student and Teacher Documents can be found in the Supporting Information when readers are logged in. 

While meeting in December of 2017, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2019 the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements (IYPT 2019). 

This year coincides with the 150th anniversary of the discovery of the Periodic System as developed by Dmitry Mendeleev. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is celebrating IYPT 2019 as it marks its own 100th anniversary. This will be a year of celebrating and promoting the importance of the Periodic Table, and its applications and connection with all areas of science.

Figure 1: World’s Largest Periodic Table Event - Flyer

The American Chemical Society Western Michigan Section, has been involved in promoting National Chemistry Week (NCW) for many years. Most recently, they have hosted Chemistry at the Mall and the local ACS illustrated Poem Contest. This year, they are planning a special IYPT celebration to be held at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in Allendale, Michigan (see Figure 1). This event will be FREE and open to the public. The highlight of the celebration will be the unveiling of the world’s largest periodic table. Schools, groups, and local companies are making HUGE elements (216 inches across by 162 inches tall), and when put together they will make a table that is 108 yards long by 53.3 yards tall, almost as big as a football field! The organizers have applied to the Guinness World Records in hopes of establishing this table as the largest in the world.

As of April 8th, there are only 39 elements left to be claimed out of the 118 elements that make up the Periodic Table of Elements. The organizers are looking for groups to take on the task of making an element and participating in the creation of the World’s Largest Periodic Table for the IYPT. Near or far, any groups who want to participate are more than welcome to. There are 17% completed and returned to date. Each one different and creative in their own way.

Figure 2: A Few Completed Elements 

As elements are being finished, the organizers are collecting them and preparing for assembly of the World’s Largest Periodic Table. Photos are taken each time an element is added to the collection as a way of keeping track of the elements that have been received (see Figure 2). There have been multiple local schools, businesses, and groups participating in the event thus far. Thanks to ChemEd X we have had a number of schools and groups from outside Michigan claim an element, make it and return it to GVSU. A duo all the way from Texas, John J Glover and Risa Diamond, created an entry for Phosphorus and sent it in. They are hoping to book flights and attend the event on October 19, 2019 (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Phosphorus - Submitted by John J Glover and Risa Diamond of Texas

In addition to the Largest Periodic Table project, there will be a demo show, 16 tables with hands on activities, a college poster display, and a K-12 illustrated poster contest. The celebration is planned for 10am to 2pm at the GVSU Kelly Family Sports Center (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: The event will take place at the GVSU Kelly Family Sports Center

Michelle DeWitt has been an ACS member for 26 years and has been actively involved in the local section governance and outreach for most of that time. She is the lead chemistry laboratory supervisor for GVSU. DeWitt is spearheading this project and is the lead contact for schools and other groups interested in participating by putting together an element to be included in the table. Due to the time required to put together each element, the event committee needs to have an accurate account of how many elements are complete with enough time to make a plan for completing any remaining elements, so the elements need to be delivered to GVSU by May 1st (or at a later date if discussed with Michelle DeWitt).

Figure 5: The status of elements for the West Michigan ACS IYPT event as of 4/5/19.

View this listto see what elements might by available currently (see Figure 5). If your group would like to make an element, reach out to Michelle DeWitt: dewittmi@gvsu.edu. Read the Participation Details pdf below for important details.

participation_details_for_largest_periodic_table_project_copy.pdf

participation_details_for_largest_periodic_table_project_copy.pdf

This blog post is co-authored by Michelle DeWitt and Amber Jourdan. This is an update to a previous ChemEd X article about the event: Largest Periodic Table - World Record Attempt published 1/30/19.

Information about other IYPT events: 

https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/periodictable/iypt-events.html (accessed 4/8/19)

https://www.iypt2019.org/Events (accessed 4/8/19)

Producing Tomorrow’s Adaptable Chemist

The April 2019 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education is now available online to subscribers. Topics featured in this issue include: Machine Learning; Revised International System of Units; Examining Chemical Information Literacy; Flipped Teaching; Chemistry and Business; Learning about Safety; Researched-Based Courses; Effective Teaching Resources; Learning through Play; Exploring Water Treatment; Green Chemistry Laboratories; Experiments with NMR Spectroscopy; Investigating Kinetics; Computer-Based Experiences; From the Archive: Chemists Celebrate Earth Week 2019—Take Note: The Chemistry of Paper.

Cover: Machine Learning

Recent advances in computation are spawning explosive growth in the use of machine learning tools. To better prepare students, scientists and researchers should become familiar with the tools and the current limitations of artificial intelligence, and include machine learning practice in the classroom when appropriate. In the article Machine Learning for Fluid Property Correlations: Classroom Examples with MATLAB, Lisa Joss and Erich A. Müller present a classroom exercise for first-year science and engineering students who are tasked with using an artificial neural network to produce a correlation predicting the normal boiling point of organic compounds from an unabridged data set of more than 6000 compounds.

The April Editorial also discusses teaching and machine learning:

Can Today’s Chemistry Curriculum Actually Produce Tomorrow’s Adaptable Chemist? ~ Thomas A. Holme

Another paper in this issue that involves extensive data analysis:

Introducing Undergraduate Students to Metabolomics Using Liquid Chromatography–High Resolution Mass Spectrometry Analysis of Horse Blood ~ Mary C. Boyce, Nathan G. Lawler, Yingqi Tu, and Stacey N. Reinke

Commentary: Revised International System of Units

In November 2018, the 26th meeting of the General Conference on Weights and Measures approved a revision to the International System of Units (Système International, SI) to go into effect May 20, 2019. Find out What Chemistry Teachers Should Know about the Revised International System of Units (Système International) in the commentary by Carmen J. Giunta.

Examining Chemical Information Literacy

“I Wanna Just Google It and Find the Answer”: Student Information Searching in a Problem-Based Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory Experiment ~ Ginger V. Shultz and Jennifer M. Zemke

Flipped Teaching

Using a Partially Flipped Learning Model To Teach First Year Undergraduate Chemistry ~ Rena Bokosmaty, Adam Bridgeman, and Meloni Muir

Flipping Introductory Retrosynthetic Analysis: An Exemplar Course To Get the Ball Rolling ~ Andrew F. Parsons

Chemistry and Business

Development of a Highly Flexible, Interdisciplinary Program in Chemical Commerce and a Capstone Course in Commercial Chemistry ~ Kevin M. Bucholtz, Madison M. Copeland, and Stefanie D. Swanger

Chemistry of Sustainable Products: Filling the Business Void in Green-Chemistry Curricula ~ Ryan M. Bouldin and Zoë Folchman-Wagner

Learning about Safety

Introduction to Laboratory Safety for Graduate Students: An Active-Learning Endeavor ~ David J. Hill, Olivia F. Williams, Danianne P. Mizzy, Therese F. Triumph, Catherine R. Brennan, Dawn C. Mason, and David S. Lawrence

Introducing Toxicology into the Undergraduate Chemistry Laboratory Using Safety Data Sheets and Sunscreen Activities ~ Grace A. Lasker, Nancy J. Simcox, Karolina E. Mellor, Melissa L. Mullins, Suzanne M. Nesmith, Saskia van Bergen, and Paul T. Anastas

Researched-Based Courses

Combining Inquiry-Based and Team-Teaching Models to Design a Research-Driven, Cross-Disciplinary Laboratory Course ~ Jeremy R. Burkett and Timothy M. Dwyer

Bioplastics in the General Chemistry Laboratory: Building a Semester-Long Research Experience ~ Alexandra M. Ward and Graeme R. A. Wyllie

Study of the Effect of Volume Contraction in Methanol–Water Mixtures Used as Solvents for Analytical Purposes: A Student-Centered Project for Practical Learning ~ P. G. Rodríguez Ortega, B. Gilbert-López, S. Esteo Donaire, and M. Montejo

Effective Teaching Resources

Partnering Teachers and Scientists: Translating Carbohydrate Research into Curriculum Resources for Secondary Science Classrooms ~ Ryan B. Snitynsky, Kerry Rose, and Jerine M. Pegg

Addressing Misconceptions Related to Mass–Matter Conservation and Bond Energetics with a Modified Gauss Accelerator ~ Robert G. Gullion, Terry Gullion, Michelle Richards-Babb, and Mark Schraf

Effective and Inexpensive HPLC Analogue for First-Year Students: Buret Chromatography of Food Dyes in Drinks ~ Brian Stankus, Rosemary White, and Binyomin Abrams

Application of Didactic Strategies as Multisensory Teaching Tools in Organic Chemistry Practices for Students with Visual Disabilities ~ Gabriela A. Fernández, Romina A. Ocampo, Andrea R. Costantino, and Néstor S. Dop

Constructing a Low-Cost Polarized Optical Microscope for Undergraduate Material-Characterization Studies ~ Sunmeng Wang and Derek J. Schipper

Learning through Play

Puzzle to Build Organic Molecules with Sticky Notes ~ Kevin P. O’Halloran

Game-Based Application for Helping Students Review Chemical Nomenclature in a Fun Way ~ Mary Anne Sousa Lima, Álvaro Carvalho Monteiro, Antonio José Melo Leite Junior, Izac Sidarta de Andrade Matos, Francisco Serra Oliveira Alexandre, Davi Janô Nobre, André Jalles Monteiro, and José Nunes da Silva Júnior

Exploring Water Treatment

“Nanoblocks”: A Playful Method To Learn about Nanotechnology-Enabled Water and Air Treatment ~ Anjali Mulchandani, Ariel J. Atkinson, Sergi Garcia-Segura, and Paul Westerhoff

Spectroscopic Evaluation of Removal Efficiency for a Pharmaceutical Pollutant in Water Using a Magnetite-Activated Carbon Nanocomposite ~ Adam J. Fisher, Monica M. Keeley, Jeremy M. Lane, and Ping Y. Furlan

Activity Analysis of Iron in Water Using a Simple LED Spectrophotometer ~ Benjamin J. Place

Green Chemistry Laboratories

Determining Iron(III) Concentration in a Green Chemistry Experiment Using Phyllanthus emblica (Indian Gooseberry) Extract and Spectrophotometry ~ Parawee Rattanakit and Rasimate Maungchang

Teaching Atom Economy and E-Factor Concepts through a Green Laboratory Experiment: Aerobic Oxidative Cleavage of meso-Hydrobenzoin to Benzaldehyde Using a Heterogeneous Catalyst ~ Chun Ho Lam, Vincent Escande, Karolina E. Mellor, Julie B. Zimmerman, and Paul T. Anastas

Introducing Students to Mechanochemistry via Environmentally Friendly Organic Synthesis Using a Solvent-Free Mechanochemical Preparation of the Antidiabetic Drug Tolbutamide ~ Evelina Colacino, Gandrath Dayaker, Alain Morère, and Tomislav Friščić

Semimicro/Microscale Adaptation of the Cobalt Chloride/Sodium Borohydride Reduction of Methyl Oleate ~ James R. McKee, Murray Zanger, Carmine Chiariello, James A. McKee, Walter Dorfner, Elisabetta Fasella, and Yumee Koo

Experiments with NMR Spectroscopy

Breaking Amide C–N Bonds in an Undergraduate Organic Chemistry Laboratory ~ Jacob E. Dander, Lucas A. Morrill, Melinda M. Nguyen, Shuming Chen, and Neil K. Garg

Resorcin[4]arenes: A Convenient Scaffold To Study Supramolecular Self-Assembly and Host:Guest Interactions for the Undergraduate Curriculum ~ Michael C. Young, Katherine E. Djernes, John L. Payton, Daniel Liu, and Richard J. Hooley

Molecular Properties of Caffeine Explored by NMR: A Benchtop NMR Experiment for Undergraduate Physical-Chemistry Laboratories ~ James E. Kent and Nicholle G. A. Bell

Investigating Kinetics

Clock Reaction Revisited: Catalyzed Redox Substrate-Depletive Reactions ~ Taweetham Limpanuparb, Chattarin Ruchawapol, and Dulyarat Sathainthammanee

Exploration of Substituent and Isotope Effects on Reaction Rates by a Computational Modeling Experiment ~ Christine Morales and Franklin Chen

Introduction to Droplet-Based Millifluidic Chemistry Using a Macroscopic-Droplet Generator ~ Clotilde Vié, Jacques Fattaccioli, and Philippe Jacq

KinSim: A Research-Grade, User-Friendly, Visual Kinetics Simulator for Chemical-Kinetics and Environmental-Chemistry Teaching ~ Zhe Peng and Jose L. Jimenez

Computer-Based Experiences

Dilemma of the “Best Wavefunction”: Comparing Results of the STO-NG Procedure versus the Linear Variational Method ~ Jhon Fredy Pérez-Torres

Developing and Implementing a Free Online Protein Structure and Function Exploration Project To Teach Undergraduate Students Macromolecular Structure–Function Relationships ~ Elizabeth L. Magnotti, Julia Moy, Rosalie Sleppy, Anna Carey, Yitna Firdyiwek, Reginald H. Garrett, and Charles M. Grisham

From the Archive: Chemists Celebrate Earth Week 2019—Take Note: The Chemistry of Paper

The ACS annual event, Chemists Celebrate Earth Week (CCEW), brings focus to topics that illustrate the positive role chemistry plays in the world. The list below highlights JCE content related to the CCEW 2019 theme “Take Note: The Chemistry of Paper”, to be celebrated April 21-27, 2019, by examining the chemistry of paper, experimenting with paper recycling, and using paper to explore chemistry.

Examining the Chemistry of Paper

The Story of Paper ~ H. K. Benson

Paper: A Modified Natural Polymer ~ J. Arthur Campbell

Identification of Paper by Stationary Phase Performance ~ Michael J. Smith, Ilda C. Vale, and Fiona M. Gray

Demonstration Extensions Based on Color-Changing Goldenrod Paper ~ Donald K. Schorr and Dean J. Campbell

The Secret of Smart Paper ~ Brian McCall, Lynn Diener, and J. Aura Gimm

The Chemistry behind Carbonless Copy Paper ~ Mary Anne White

Experimenting with Paper Recycling

New Paper from Newspaper ~ JCE Staff

A Simple Flotation De-Inking Experiment for the Recycling of Paper ~ Richard A. Venditti

Paper to Plastics: An Interdisciplinary Summer Outreach Project in Sustainability ~ Fiona Tamburini, Thomas Kelly, Eranthie Weerapana, and Jeffery A. Byers

Using Paper To Explore Chemistry

Colorful Lather Printing ~ Susan A. S. Hershberger, Matt Nance, Arlyne M. Sarquis, and Lynn M. Hogue

Artistic Anthocyanins and Acid–Base Chemistry ~ Jenna Lech and Vladimir Dounin

The Write Stuff: Using Paper Chromatography to Separate an Ink Mixture ~ JCE Staff 

Using Paper-Based Diagnostics with High School Students To Model Forensic Investigation and Colorimetric Analysis ~ Rebekah R. Ravgiala, Stefi Weisburd, Raymond Sleeper, Andres Martinez, Dorota Rozkiewicz, George M. Whitesides, and Kathryn A. Hollar

Cost Effective Paper-Based Colorimetric Microfluidic Devices and Mobile Phone Camera Readers for the Classroom ~ Myra T. Koesdjojo, Sumate Pengpumkiat, Yuanyuan Wu, Anukul Boonloed, Daniel Huynh, Thomas P. Remcho, and Vincent T. Remcho

Microscale Electrolysis Using Coin-Type Lithium Batteries and Filter Paper ~ Masahiro Kamata and Seiko Yajima

Glucose-Driven Fuel Cell Constructed from Enzymes and Filter Paper ~ Jun Ge, Romana Schirhagl, and Richard N. Zare

Use JCE Today To Help Produce Adaptable Chemists of the Future

With over 48,000 articles to explore, you will always find something useful—including the articles mentioned above, and many more, in the Journal of Chemical Education. Articles that are edited and published online ahead of print (ASAP—As Soon As Publishable) are also available.

The AP Chemistry Exam is getting closer. What will you provide your students to review for the big day?

The Advanced Placement Chemistry Exam is a beast! Students need to know a lot of content and how to apply it to so many different situations. It can be very daunting for students (especially my students as this is their first AP science course). And the stress can also be compounding for novice and experienced teachers as well. A lot of factors will influence how you will be able to review and prepare for the exam. So I broke down my strategies into two sections; how I reviewed for the exam when I didn’t have much time in class, and how I review now that I do have time in class.

Review Tactics - When Time is Limited

We started practice early. As early as feasibly possible (maybe as early as February), I had students practice multiple choice questions on Mondays, calling them “MCMs” (no, not “Man Crush Mondays”… “Multiple Choice Mondays”). I would assign 10-15 questions that had been covered earlier in the year (dependent on the complexity of the questions and how much time I was willing to spend). At first, I would allow the students to take more time than is allotted on the actual exam (the exam has 60 multiple choice in 90 minutes which is roughly 1.5 minutes per question so I was giving nearly two minutes each). As the weeks went on I decreased the time they could spend per question until it matched the AP multiple choice timing. Back then I used sample multiple choice from very old released exams dating back to the 1980s and 1990s, which I still made available on my website for students to use at home. But if I were to do this now, I would use the multiple choice questions in the secure exams, available on the AP Audit website after you log in. Please remember that the students cannot keep these exams, so they must be collected after each use.

We made cram sheets. Each pair of students was assigned a specific topic and had to create a full review sheet (could be multiple pages) that included diagrams and pictures, vocabulary words, and worked examples. Some years I had a lot of students enrolled in AP chemistry so I made it into a competition: the team with the best cram sheet for their topic was given prizes and all winning cram sheets were posted for the students to access and use. You can see old cram sheets on my website.

We bought review books. I assigned certain chapters for weeks at a time. I would collect and check on Mondays (while they were taking the multiple choice). The students had to annotate the chapters by underlining key ideas, boxing in vocabulary words, and highlighting parts that were confusing (since many of the books come with answers worked out I needed some way to know they were actually utilizing the book). The district paid for the books, which was exceptionally awesome. There are tons of books out there such as Adrian Dingle’s Crash Course, 5 steps to a 5, The Princeton Review, Barron’s AP Review, etc. My major issue with review books is that most of the questions are not structured like the actual AP FRQs so I didn’t want to use them as a standalone way to review. But they often summarize the information well.

We had out of class review sessions at the local library. Only dedicated students really showed up (and a few that were forced by their parents). Each review session was 2 hours and would review 2-3 major topics at a time. We would see old exam questions and review common misconceptions and pitfalls.

We took a mock exam.The mock exam was a previously released exam, outside of school, volunteer only. It really showed students how they would perform and how they could improve. It also exposed them to the pressure of the timing of the test and how the pages of the exam are formatted. Again, the local library came to the rescue here, though many high schools would probably allow you to use their facilities. A follow up meeting was held to review the answers.

Review Tactics for In-Class Time

The major reasons I have more time in class for exam review now are because I have refined my teaching over the course of a few years to include the specific learning objectives outlined in the AP Course and Exam Description (CED) with only a few additions. I also began flipping my classroom a few years ago which really increased the amount of time I have in class for AP questions practice. It is so much nicer having time in class to review because I am not spending my free time outside of school to prep the students and all students are able to participate in the review. This year I have four solid weeks to review with my students.

We started with a mock exam. We used the most recent practice exam (on the audit website), timed at 75 minutes for the 50 multiple choice on day one, questions 1-3 in 60 minutes on day two, and questions 4-7 in 28 minutes on day three (similar to timing on the exam in which students will have 60 multiple choice questions in 90 minutes and all the free response questions in 1 hour and 45 minutes (the practice exam doesn’t include 10 field test questions that the normal exam will). If you choose to have the students perform a mock exam you can split up you time however makes sense to you. Generally the long questions take approximately 20 minutes each and the short questions take approximately 7 minutes each. It is definitely time consuming to do, but the mock exam is so helpful. The students really felt the time crunch (although all my exams are timed throughout the year). They got to see how the exam is formatted, with the free response questions all grouped together with lined paper for work. It really helps them feel more comfortable with the exam if they can see what it will look like ahead of time. I graded all the exams (this was time consuming!) and gave notes to students about where their answers should be written (not squeezed in corners, not between the questions, rather on the lines provided) and hints about how to write answers clearer and more concisely. In class, we went over the exam question by question in teams. I gave them the scoring guidelines and the students were able to see what was expected of them. Students were able to ‘find points” they could have answered correctly which helped give them hope for a better grade as we reviewed more.

We complete all the practice exams. I have 42 minutes of class time daily and an additional 42 minutes every other day all year (but I started late in the Northeast.. after labor day… ugh). So on 42 minute days we complete one long and one short questioned timed to 28 minutes and then we review it by looking at the scoring guidelines. I use the older practice exams (also available on the audit website) because the answers are not easily available for the students to look up. On 84 minute days we do the two free response questions, but then we also complete 20 multiple choice questions in 30 minutes and review those together in teams. In four weeks we should be able to complete most of the 2014-2018 practice exams. I like to practice the exams from most recent to older in case we don’t get to the 2014 practice exam. The students often cite that this is their favorite way to review. Please remember the students should not be taking practice exams home because they are secure exams. They are supposed to be use in class only.

We make videos. My students are assigned one long and one short free response question to solve on video (hands and paper only, no faces). We use the old published free response exams from College Board. The students obviously have access to the answers online. So their mission is to read the free response question, read the scoring guidelines, and then make a video that explains the answers in “student language”.  The students become experts about the topics in their question. I started this last year and a student who had a review question about Coulomb’s Law was so excited to see it on last year’s exam stating, “I KNOW I got that question right!” which is the reason I continue to do this review assignment. The rubric I use is added below. It is counted as one quiz grade per video. This year I will have my students work in pairs so they can see more questions. Each pair will have two long and two short response questions to record (so it is the same amount of work per student as last year). Once all the video are complete, I upload them to Edpuzzle (a free video site) so only my students’ can see each other’s videos. From that website I am able to monitor which students watched the videos that their peers made and I can embed comments (in case I would like to elaborate on a portion of their video) and add questions. This year I will have my students create one question for their video that is similar to the question presented in the video (preferably something that targets what the recorder thought was the most difficult part of the problem). I will post the videos with that question embedded. Students watching the video will have to answer that question along with a brief summary of how they thought the video helped them review and what they still have questions about. I have 17 students, which will mean 34 videos. But the videos are easily uploaded and it won’t take me too much time. This way the students are solving in class practice exams without available answers and still solving old exam questions on their own time where the answers are available. And the students have their peers explaining the scoring rubric because sometimes the language in the rubrics are hard to navigate for students.

In summary, the best thing you can do for your students is to provide them with the opportunity to try as many AP problems as possible without burning them out. The more problems they try, the more patterns that they will be able to see, and hopefully apply to the exam in May. What review tactics do you suggest? Please share with us in the comments!