Chemical Mystery #5: How to burn water
The video displays a neat trick you can do for your students. What do you suppose is the secret behind this trick? Hint: It has to do with chemistry!
The video displays a neat trick you can do for your students. What do you suppose is the secret behind this trick? Hint: It has to do with chemistry!
Yesterday I posted about Day 1 of the Chemistry Camp
My goal with this summer camp was to expose students to the chemistry of things around us - plants, food, batteries, fuel, etc. Fortunately, by studying plant pigments and photosynthesis, students were able to learn about and utilize common lab techniques.
Oh summertime! My non-teacher friends and neighbors like to point out that it must be great having summers off from work. I try to explain that I’m still working although it’s really nice having a break from the students. And I know that a lot of colleagues in my PLN on Twitter are enjoying their break from students too while still spending some time working on upcoming challenges and curriculum designs.
The “Elephant Toothpaste” experiment is a very popular, albeit messy chemistry demonstration. To carry out this experiment, place a 250 mL graduated cylinder on something that you wouldn’t mind getting messy.
Have you read “Making Thinking Visible”? You should. It focuses on making student thinking visible to the teacher. While still learning to use the visible thinking routines, I really feel more conscious of students’ understandings than ever.
Here is a sample activity that I adapted to fit my honor chemistry students’ needs:
Some orange peels can cause balloons to pop. The compound in orange peels called limonene is responsible for this effect. Limonene is responsible for the wonderful smell of oranges, and it is a liquid at room temperature.
A fun experiment to conduct when discussing phase diagrams is the melting of solid carbon dioxide (dry ice).
Last year I came across a link on Twitter regarding an art installation by Roger Hiorns in England titled “Seizure.” Some of you may have seen it too – a condemned flat in London was essentially sealed off and filled with more than 75,000 L of supersaturated copper sulfate solution.
Conducting experiments with liquid nitrogen experiments is a sure-fire way to energize many chemistry lessons. Check out the Misbehaving Balloon demo!