WHAT AM I DOING TO HELP KIDS ACHIEVE?
HOW DO I KNOW WHEN THEY ARE THERE?
WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE?
So I started the heat of fusion lab. I had students get data. Then I posed the question, "How could you figure out how much energy it takes to melt some ice with this data?" I asked students what they would need to know to use the data to solve the problem and we came up with a list of questions. Now we started using the American Modeling Teacher's Association heat model with the bar graphs. Students i.d. the "system" and look at what is happening with the energy due phase, chemical or thermal energy. Hopefully, after doing this they won't confuse which mass to use in Q=MCdeltaT.
A piece of good news...I had student build "lego calorimeters" from a current J. Chem. Ed. article. One student who did a really good design explained that on the way home he lost the resistor so he ripped apart an old transistor radio for a similar resistor and then thought it might be nice to have a switch so he pulled that off another broken device. I was pretty impressed with his ability to scrounge and get it done. Building your own chemical instrumental device and scrounging to make it work is in the spirit of a true analytical chemist.
No comments:
Post a Comment