A favorite demonstration is to boil water by lowering the pressure in a bell jar using a vacuum pump. Unfortunately, purchasing a bell jar, vacuum plate, and vacuum pump can run upwards of $1,000 which poses a hardship for many teachers. Here are two simple and inexpensive demonstrations of phase equilibrium and vapor pressure.
For the last two years, the district I worked for has been tirelessly working toward curriculum changes that would better line up with the new state science standards. Michigan hasn’t officially adopted NGSS, instead adopting the Michigan Science Standards (based on NGSS). The Michigan Science Standards (MSS) has a lot of similarities with NGSS in terms of how we would teach the content.
A variety of activities performed at a science camp that relate to the chemistry of the solar system are reported. These activities could prove useful in the chemistry curriculum or in planning for National Chemistry Week in 2018, the theme of which is Chemistry is Out of This World!
Now that the 2018 administration of the AP Chemistry Exam is in the books, all of us AP Chemistry teachers now have an opportunity to reflect on the year as we turn our attention toward preparing for the fall.
If you want to lose weight, you have to burn calories. Anyone who has gone on a diet knows this. But when someone loses weight, have you ever wondered where the lost mass goes?
Over the last two years, the Official AP Chemistry Community forum on the College Board website has been largely, though not completely, displaced by the formation of a Facebook group called National AP Chemistry Teachers that now boasts 1,962 members.
I attended a professional development session on the NGSS earlier this week by Brett Moulding and Nicole Paulson based on the book they wrote with Rodger Bybee, A Vision and Plan for Science Teaching and Learning. The authors propose the “gathering-reasoning-communicating” (GRC) structure as a simplified way of thinking about the Science and Engineering Practices. Reasoning is the keystone of the GRC structure and the primary thing we want science students to be doing. “Gathering” provides the raw materials for reasoning and “communicating” helps us know that reasoning has taken place.
As a secondary science teacher, I have contact with my students everyday. Making relationships and learning about all of my students is key to letting them know that I am invested in their success.
Do you require your students to learn all the element names and symbols? Do your students struggle with chemical nomenclature, chemical equations, or stoichiometry? You may want to consider getting them back to the basics.
The focus of this article will be on how to incorporate the first science and engineering practice, asking questions, into your chemistry instruction. The most common professional development technique I have encountered regarding this practice is Question Formulation Technique (QFT).
