Published: March 10, 2011
ACS Addresses President Obama's Call for 'Sputnik Response'
American Chemical Society (ACS) educator James Kessler will demonstrate MiddleSchoolChemistry.com, a new, free, online middle school chemistry curriculum, at the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) meeting in San Francisco on Friday, March 11. The curriculum is produced by the American Chemical Society and is being launched at this meeting, coincident with the International Year of Chemistry 2011.
Science and education reporters are encouraged to attend the session, #47, from 11 a.m. to noon in room Golden Gate 4 of the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. For press credentials, please contact Kate Falk of NSTA, kfalk@nsta.org
President Barack Obama in his State of the Union Address said, "This is our generation's 'Sputnik moment,'" and has said strengthening U.S. science education must be a national imperative. MiddleSchoolChemistry.com provides teachers with a safety-tested, free, online chemistry curriculum that directly ties to school learning standards.
A middle school boy conducts chemistry experiments with a household polymer that absorbs water. Photo by American Chemical Society
|
Veteran eighth-grade science teacher Chris Herald, of Eisenhower Middle School in Manhattan, Kan., has tested MiddleSchoolChemistry.com.
"I'm anxious to use it!" Herald said. "I think the visuals are really nice. In a textbook, there's no motion and no color, and you can't see the sharing of the covalent bonds. The video shows what happens with the electrons. And each segment is short, so it is very useable. These days every minute counts in the classroom. It's easy to navigate the webpages and it's free!"
All of the experiments offer simple, elegant activities that teach the most important - and some of the most abstract - concepts of chemistry. One experiment, that's also easy to do at home, shows how molecules attract each other.
Using an eyedropper, squeeze a couple drops of water onto a piece of wax paper taped to an index card and watch the drops quickly pool together to form a larger water drop. Then, take a popsicle stick and try to spread the water blob apart - it's hard to do! That's because water molecules are very strongly attracted to each other; they don't want to separate. Most of us don't often think of water this way, but chemists do. And middle school kids will too once they start working with this curriculum.
Another plus for teachers is that unlike many online resources that may or may not be reliable, MiddleSchoolChemistry.com has been developed by professional science educators at the ACS and thoroughly reviewed by chemists for safety in the classroom.
Educational resources for elementary and high school students are also available from the American Chemical Society at www.acs.org/education.
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
Search News
