Chemists Celebrate Earth Day—The Wonders of Water
The April 2014 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education is now available online to subscribers. The April issue features water and environmental chemistry.
Chemists Celebrate Earth Day is an ACS annual event that seeks to bring international focus to environmental topics, such as clean air, water, and energy, to illustrate the positive role chemistry plays in preserving Earth. The 2014 theme—The Wonders of Water—features the unique properties of water that are crucial for life and a cleaner environment.
There are articles on water and environmental chemistry throughout the April issue to help you make the most of this yearly celebration:
Editorial
Telling Time: Chemistry Education in the Anthropocene Epoch by Peter G. Mahaffy
Activity-Based Approaches to Teaching about Water
Activity-Based Approach For Teaching Aqueous Solubility, Energy, and Entropy by Laura Eisen, Nadia Marano, and Samantha Glazier
Developing and Implementing Inquiry-Based, Water Quality Laboratory Experiments for High School Students To Explore Real Environmental Issues Using Analytical Chemistry by Daphna Mandler, Ron Blonder, Malka Yayon, Rachel Mamlok-Naaman, and Avi Hofstein
Environmental Projects
“But Aren’t Diesel Engines Just for Big, Smelly Trucks?” An Interdisciplinary Curriculum Project for High School Chemistry Students by Brian P. Zoellner, Richard H. Chant, and Kelly Wood
Adsorption of Oxy-Anions in the Teaching Laboratory: An Experiment To Study a Fundamental Environmental Engineering Problem by Mitch D’Arcy, Florence Bullough, Chris Moffat, Edoardo Borgomeo, Micheal Teh, Ramon Vilar, and Dominik J. Weiss
Water Demonstration
Making Water the Exciting Way: A Classroom Demonstration of Catalysis by Ryan L. Stowe, Steven M. Bischof, Michael M. Konnick, Claas H. Hövelmann, Deborah Leach-Scampavia, Roy A. Periana, and Brian G. Hashiguchi
Water Labs
Constructing a Simple Distillation Apparatus To Purify Seawater: A High School Chemistry Experiment by Alandra Kahl, Danita Heller, and Kim Ogden
Synthesis, Dehydration, and Rehydration of Calcium Sulfate (Gypsum, Plaster of Paris) by Gergely Sirokman
Adsorption Kinetics and Isotherms: A Safe, Simple, and Inexpensive Experiment for Three Levels of Students by Polly R. Piergiovanni
Analysis of a Natural Yellow Dye: An Experiment for Analytical Organic Chemistry by Alexandre Villela, Goverdina C. H. Derksen, and Teris A. van Beek
Binary Phase Diagrams at the Air–Water Interface: An Experiment for Undergraduate Physical Chemistry Students by Molly C. Larsen
Environmental Labs
Operation Allelopathy: An Experiment Investigating an Alternative to Synthetic Agrochemicals by Nuria Chinchilla, Alexandra G. Durán, Ceferino Carrera, Jesús Ayuso, and Francisco A. Macías
Catalytic Transfer Hydrogenation of Castor Oil by Hanan Alwaseem, Craig J. Donahue, and Simona Marincean
Determination of Wear Metals in Used Motor Oil by Flame Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy by Julie A. Palkendo, Jessica Kovach, and Thomas A. Betts
Discovering New Biosorbents with Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy: An Undergraduate Laboratory Experiment by Nathan Garrison, Maria Cunningham, Douglas Varys, and Douglas J. Schauer
A Solvent Microextraction Approach for Environmental Analysis: Colorimetric Assay for Phosphorus Determination in Natural Waters by Francisco Pena-Pereira, Marta Costas, Carlos Bendicho, and Isela Lavilla
Collection, Extraction, and Analysis of Lead in Atmospheric Particles by Kathlyn L. Fillman and Julie A. Palkendo
Direct Determination of Gas pH and Carbon Dioxide Concentration with pH Electrodes by Qinlan Yang, Jun Long, Hao Zheng, Xianqing Tian, Dean Lei, Xiaoqiong Zhu, Yong Guo, and Dan Xiao
Advanced Placement (AP) Chemistry
It’s Advanced Placement (AP) testing time of year. The authors Jennifer Claesgens, Paul L. Daubenmire, Kathleen M. Scalise, Scott Balicki, Perman Gochyyev, and Angelica M. Stacy researched the question:
What Does a Student Know Who Earns a Top Score on the Advanced Placement Chemistry Exam?
This article is available to non-subscribers as part of ACS’s new Editors’ Choice program. Additional discussions on AP Chemistry will be appearing later this year in the September issue.
Games
Insulin–Glucagon Interactions: Using a Game To Understand Hormonal Control by Colleen J. Conway and Maureen Leonard
Biochemistry Resources
Effects of Guided Inquiry versus Lecture Instruction on Final Grade Distribution in a One-Semester Organic and Biochemistry Course by Colleen J. Conway
“Big-Picture” Worksheets To Help Students Learn and Understand the Pentose Phosphate Pathway and the Calvin Cycle by Paul A. Sims
Use of Freely Available and Open Source Tools for In Silico Screening in Chemical Biology by Gareth W. Price, Phillip S. Gould, and Andrew Marsh
From the Archives
To further celebrate Earth Day 2014— The Wonders of Water—you can enjoy access to a collection of previously published articles, hands-on experiments, and demonstrations from the Journal of Chemical Education on water properties and water in the environment available at http://pubs.acs.org/page/jceda8/earthday2014.html.
Author Resources
Thinking of submitting to the Journal of Chemical Education? There are numerous author resources available on JCE’s ACS Web site, including:
But Wait…There’s More!
You will find all of 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 January 2014 issue will be available as a sample issue for the entire year; if you like what you read, consider a subscription.