The cost of everything keeps going up! What’s a laboratory science instructor to do when it comes time to place an order for chemicals and equipment for the next year? One solution is to find cheaper substitutes that can still achieve the desired student outcomes.
A couple of years ago, with the re-write of the AP Chemistry test and the increased focus on inquiry...
With a quick internet search, I found a Flinn Scientific video by Lee Marek presenting this demonstration called “Potato Candle”...
Equilibrium is a challenging topic for high school chemistry students to understand. This year I decided to tackle the conceptual understanding of equilibrium first with three different analogies and a Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) activity before even mentioning the words "equilibrium expression".
We’ve gotten more mileage out of this simple lab than anything else we’ve ever done! We must admit it is easy and fast — with no disposal issues. We basically are separating water from a colored solution by boiling and collecting the water on a cold finger — created with inexpensive aluminum foil filled with ice.
In August 2015, Educational Innovations was able to bring back goldenrod paper. For years, this paper had been discontinued, apparently because goldenrod paper was not able to be recycled. The fibers in the paper were saturated with golden colored dye.
The Chemical sunset demonstrates the Tyndall effect in a fun and engaging way. We have used this demonstration for both instructional and outreach purposes. Colloidal sulfur is produced by the reaction between sodium thiosulfate and hydrochloric acid.
Part 1 of this article was published in Chem 13 News in November 2014. This second part presents three titration exercises of increasing sophistication, suitable for students with some titration experience. Citric acid and sodium hydroxide are used for all three presented titrations.
Penney Sconzo presented this nifty demonstration at the ChemEd 2015 Generations Symposium in Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw GA. This is an easy, colorful and safe microscale version of the Ammonia Fountain.
This last article of a three-part series describes how to use syringes, pressure gauges and Mason jars to do the gas laws: Boyle’s Law (pV), Gay-Lussac’s Law (pT) and Avogadro’s Experiment (pn). The huge advantage of using a Mason jar for the pressure vs amount relationship is that the stopper and ring combination produce a sealed container that can withstand a pressure inside of 2 atm without fear of the stopper popping or the glass breaking.