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Beyond the Curriculum
I always find this time of year quite harrowing. I am right in the middle of academic competition season with Olympiads in physics, chemistry, biology, and math. I have science bowl and ocean bowl...
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Developing a High School Food Chemistry Elective
About three years ago I had an idea.I thought it would be fun to build a new Chemistry elective around the science of food. I floated the idea by some colleagues and students and everyone agreed; a...
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Chem101
Chem 101 is a FREE (for a limited time) app for any apple or android device designed to improve engagement in college chemistry courses. Although the intended audience is college level, there are...
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My First Experience Using Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) in the IB Chemistry...
If you have read much of my past work here on ChemEd X, you know I am a big proponent of using Twitter for professional development. I owe many of my current teacher practices to my fellow chemistry...
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LED lights and the Periodic Table
What are we doing to help kids achieve? This summer at BCCE 16 George Lisensky and Emma Koenig from Beloit College presented a workshop on how to use LED lights to demonstrate periodic properties....
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Boiling Water, Heating Curves, and Can Crushes
In an effort to better understand my high school students' knowledge of what is happening during phase changes, heating curve calculations, and the ever popular can crush demo, I run them through a...
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BEAKER - Mix Chemicals
This week, one of my students alerted me to some mobile apps featuring chemistry. One, in particular, seems to be mostly free and incorporates a hands-on approach to conducting virtual laboratory...
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Investigations of Chemicals in Natural Food Coloring. Part 2: Berry
In this post I’ll be sharing a bit about the chemistry of the Berry food color found in McCormick’s Color from Nature food coloring. I will also describe some experiments and demonstrations that can be...
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Figuring Out Electron Configurations
After spending the start of the year using a modified version of the Modeling Instruction curriculum (density and physical properties, followed by gas laws, followed by energy and phase changes), we...
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ACS Celebrates the Achievements of Women Scientists in American History
Women’s History Month (March 1 - 31, 2017) honors the contributions of women to American culture and society. The American Chemical Society has selected some women scientists that contributed to...
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ACS Discoveries! - Making Science More Accessible
The American Chemical Society is offering a new service in hopes of making science more accessible to the public. Each week they issue a short collection of science articles, written in an interesting...
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AP Chemistry Lab Notebook Structure
How do you support growth in your students’ writing and communication over time? There are so many things: Claim, Evidence, Reasoning (CER) scaffolds, sentence starters, and more. How might all of...
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Moles, Formative Assessment and Moving Forward....
"What are we doing to help kids achieve?" Formative assessment can be a double edged sword. It can be and often is extremely helpful. Some quick short three or four well worded questions at the...
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Do you have a favorite acid-base titration lab?
HCl and NaOH, a strong acid - strong base titration? Citric acid and NaOH, a weak, triprotic acid - strong base titration? Do your students standardize the NaOH solution as a first step?As a second...
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10 Percent Happier
If this is a site all about chemistry teaching, what in the world does a book called "10% Happier" have to do with anything? Let me explain....I'll try the short, condensed, one page executive...
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JCE 94.03 March 2017 Issue Highlights
Promoting Problem-Solving and Discovery LearningThe March 2017 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education is now available online to subscribers. Topics featured in this issue include: protein...
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Especially JCE: March 2017
Throw the phrase “chemistry class” at someone to get their reaction. What do you predict it would be? A chalkboard full of stoichiometry problems? Wading through the atomic masses on the periodic...
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Nominate Outstanding High School Chemistry Teachers
In 2006, The Division of Chemical Education endowed an award program, the Regional Award for Excellence in High School Teaching, to recognize and inspire outstanding high school chemistry teachers....
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Book Review: "Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction" by Peter Atkins
I was at a workshop recently, when a friend suggested I read, Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction by Peter Atkins, Oxford University Press. The friend suggested the book would not take long to read,...
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Gas Laws and the Over-Reliance on Algorithmic Thinking
As our Gas Laws unit was coming to an end, it was time to create the test. As I thought of potential test questions that were both challenging and in alignment with the learning objectives we had...
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