Blogs

Jon Holmes announces he is stepping down as Editor-in-Chief and welcomes Jack Barbera to the role. Reflecting back on what makes ChemEd X successful he thanks those who made it so. Looking forward he encourages the ChemEd X community to stay engaged by Xploring ChemEd X, Xperiencing its community, and Xtending yourself possibly through contribution of your ideas and knowledge. Through continued Xchange, we can improve chemistry teaching and learning for all. 

This APTeach session focuses on low-prep, high-engagement strategies for AP Chemistry Unit 4 (Chemical Reactions), with an emphasis on helping students build conceptual understanding while preparing for AP-level rigor. The session highlights classroom-tested activities for net ionic equations, reaction stoichiometry, and solution stoichiometry, including labs, simulations, particle-level representations, and discussion prompts grounded in Johnstone’s Triangle. Designed to support both new and experienced AP teachers, these resources prioritize student sense-making while easing instructional planning for a traditionally challenging unit. 

In this activity, students work in groups to apply their knowledge of intermolecular forces to identify nucleobase pairs; use a foldable paper model to mimic DNA replication, DNA transcription, and RNA translation; and decode a secret message.

Want a gas-law demo that students talk about all year? Try launching ping-pong balls with liquid nitrogen. This article shares how a pep-rally idea grew into an explosive, high-engagement lesson—and how the chemistry behind it creates a moment they won’t forget.

When using standard thermodynamic values, the chemical reaction whereby ATP is converted to ADP is found to have a positive value for ΔG. This would imply the reaction REQUIRES energy. However, analyzing the process under physiological conditions shows that ΔG is in fact negative, as expected.

At our October meeting, teachers shared creative ways to make practice more engaging and meaningful. Kristen Vanderveen demonstrated a movement-based station activity for gas laws, while Sue Biggs presented her Molar Mass of a Gas lab that blends instruction with review and reflection.

The September AP Teach session focused on the application of Coulomb's Law in various sections of the AP Chemistry Curriculum and Exam Description (CED) and strategies for helping students write better responses.

What if your students derived the periodic table’s masses before they ever learned about moles? This piece reframes “classic” atomic theory as a data-driven approach to building O:C ratios, uncovering the law of definite proportions, and explaining why oxygen’s relative mass is 16 when carbon's is 12. The result is a historically grounded, quantitative model of Dalton’s ideas that makes atomic theory feel discovered—not delivered.