Welcome back!

Summer holidays are over and many of us have already been either teaching or planning units of work to teach very soon. Below is a list of some of my favourite tools and experiments I tested last year with a very good outcome. Hope it inspires you to try something new with your students.

Mystery Boxes

Student engagement through SeeSaw

Microscale precipitation reactions

Book of achievements for KS3 Science Club

Tests for cations and anions

I wish you great lessons!

Karolina

Chemical magic

If you need to run an open evening and showcase your department it´s good to have a selection of experiments and demos that will leave the audience speechless. I have already discussed the classic ammonium dichromate volcano (click here) and today I would like to share some chemical magic. This simple to set up experiment when paired up with a bit of acting can easily surprise your audience as you turn water into wine:

Then wine into water:

and lastly water into milk:

I tested it in beakers but for your "official" demo I suggest following the instructions and use wine glasses and a glass milk bottle.

If not used as a demo, you could use it in your lessons to discuss phenolphthalein as a narrow range indicator. Furthermore, it could be used in precipitation reactions lesson.

I wish you great lessons!

Karolina

Microscale precipitation reactions

Students love doing experiments. However, they often tend to waste a lot of reagents. A good way of teaching them to be less wasteful is through microscale chemistry. Here is an example of the worksheet I designed to teach my students to be more conscious of the amounts of chemicals they are using:

 

In this experiment students conduct 5 precipitation reactions and use 2-3 drops of each reagent. The worksheet is laminated and a paper towel is used to clean up afterwards. Once prepared it will last a long time.

Click here to download the worksheet.

I wish you great lessons!

Karolina