CORRESPONDENCE "MERIT SYSTEM" FOR SCIENCE CLUBS T o the Editor DEARSIR: After reading your article "The History and Operation of a Chemistry Club," by Walter Q. Bunderman [J. CHEM.EDUC.,10, 40-3 (Jan., 1933)], I thought your readers might be interested in some details of our high-school science club. Our club has been endeavoring to give t o the students a chance to acquaint themselves with the various fields of science and as a reward for their efforts we have devised a system by which all active members may be bestowed with some symbol of their work. We have called this system our "Merit System." In our Merit System a long list of activities is recorded. For each item a member may earn a given number of merits. For a given sum of merits each member is entitled to a beautiful bronze, silver, or gold club pin with the club emblem engraved on it. The requirements for these merits are moderately simple and are within the reach of all the members. For individual experiments and scientific lectures merits are given generously. Also serving as an officer in the club entitles a member to merits. Outside research is repaid by large numbers of merits so that ambitious and active members need not confine themselves merely to the club. The items for which merits are given are so many that it would be impossible to mention them all. However, should any of your readers be interested in our system for their clubs we will gradly send them any information desired. Respectfully yours, MILTONA. SANDERS, President, Science Club
Permit me to add a suggestion. At suitable intervals, say once a month, a laboratory experiment should be selected and the student be required to make an account of c o s t i . e., cost of materials used for setting up the apparatus and recovery value of same after the experiment has been performed, cost of reagents and raw materials, cost of fuel and refrigeration, market value of product compared with cost, time of chemist, rent of laboratory space, etc. The first disheartening experience of many a callow young chemist is to discover that a process which is ideally beautiful in the laboratory produces much red ink on an industrial scale. Respectfully, F. W. SMITH VIA NOGALES ARIZOKA G~ASAVE S n r ~ o aMEXICO ,
BALANCING CHEMICAL EQUATIONS T o the Editor DEARSIR: Your recent correspondence on balancing chemical equations* impels me to insert a caveat. For example:
This may be true as a gross summary of what happens but my pupils occasionally found NH1 in the reaction products of nitric acid on various metals. Further, are we constrained to imagine that the reaction can be initiated and proceed only when three atoms of copper are confronted with eight molecules of nitric acid? Is it not simpler to imagine that the reaction proceeds in steps?
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COUNTING THE COST T o the Editor DEARSIR: An article in a recent number of the JOURNAL treated of one of the by-products of chemical education, namely, training in the use of correct English and a clear elucidation of the various facts and processes involved.
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Cu HNOI = .CuNOz f H. H +'2HN01 = HIO 2HNO2 HNO, = HIO NO also some traces of ammonia
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Teachers of chemistry in their zeal to satisfy the demands of mathematics should not lose sight of the facts of chemistry. Please refer also to the Greek myth of Procrustes who has many modern imitators. Respectfully, F. W. SMITH
