Ryan Johnson and I took a trip to the top of Pikes Peak to study the Coke and Mentos experiment. And we had a few surprises along the way...
Looking for a fun way to teach gas laws? Try using brain breaks! Activities like the Longest Straw Challenge and Suck it Up Skittles Challenge not only get students up and moving but also make learning Boyle's Law engaging and memorable.
Are you having a hard time describing 3-D drawings or or showing motion of particles in your digital assignments? GIFs can help!
Using the online simulation tool (Atomsmith Classroom Online) and the ADI framework students investigate the properties of gases, along with two gas laws. An ADI "whiteboard discussion" helps in getting students to really process what the results of experiments mean to us as chemists - and how this leads to expanding our understanding of matter. This activity lends itself to an online classroom.
Card sorts are a great way to bring powerful retrieval practice into your classroom. You will find several Card Sort Hacks you can use to step up your game! You can even share these digitally to students to cut and complete at home.
I usually start of the school year with a measuring activity. This year, I used Tom Kuntzleman's Mentos and Diet Coke experiment and had students use the data to do some graphing and analysis. This was a nice lead into our gas unit. I also made my own syphon coffee maker to demonstrate for my students.
I added an extra step including a follow up Claim, Evidence & Reasoning activity to the familiar whoosh bottle activity.
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.
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?
Based on some interactions here on ChemEd X and Twitter, I have been looking for ways to have students generate more questions, ideas, and investigation methods. (See a list of relevant links below.) Some of this is inspired by Argument Driven Inquiry, while some of it is simply my own quest to move further away from being the sole source of information in the class. In this blog post, I would like to talk about how I addressed gas laws using Atomsmith Classroom Online as an investigative tool in place of lab work I did previously using the Vernier gas pressure sensor.
