Preparing to Attend Chem Lab Days

Logistical considerations:

• Days are offered in December and April
• Time slots fill up fast! We start to schedule in October and February and have priorities for booking to try and make things equitable:
  • Waitlisted schools from plans that fell through (transport issues, student interest)
  • Schools who never visited UWaterloo
  • Schools local to Waterloo Region
  • Schools who can fill in gaps into schedule we are building (we aim for two labs a day)
  • All other schools
• When you are booking the day, you will be sent a form, below is the information to fill out:
  • Contact information (Name, email, school and location)
  • Class information (grade and number of students)
    Only grades 11 and 12 can attend Chem Lab Day, a lab time slot have a cap of 44 students.
• Available dates, from a menu of options
• Activities to include: chem lab (2 hours), tour (45-60 min), lunch (60 min), lecture (45-60 min)
• Choice of experiment: Acetaminophen synthesis (organic chemistry, yield determination, melting point measurement) or Aluminum recycling (reaction balancing, multi-step synthesis, elemental tests)
• Earliest arrival time and latest departure
• Additional information (accessibility needs, notes on schedule such as students needing a pause at a certain time to pray, etc.)
• If you are bringing more than 44 students, you will need to be able to spend 5 hours on campus to fit the whole group within a day.
• If you are choosing to do another activity besides the lab, we highly recommend time to have lunch or have students pack one for the transport.
• We are booking lunch for 60 min. When we have shortened this time, it consistently caused delays in the next activity which leads to a poorer experience.

Preparing your students for the lab:

• No need to worry excessively about preparation. Our volunteers love to help and work under the assumption students will need assistance with every step of the procedure!
• For the day of the lab, make sure students are wearing proper attire (closed-toed shoes and long pants) and that they bring a pen/pencil and a calculator.
• If you do want to budget class time, a focus on the required stoichiometry calculations is great. We tend to deprioritize the math in the lab to focus on taking in the fun of doing chemistry.
• Should you want to do some pre-lab preparation or want more details on the procedures offered, interactive lessons for these experiments are below. Please contact us at chemistry.outreach@uwaterloo.ca for a printable version of the procedure and results worksheet.