,A High School-College Collaboration for the Teaching of Chemistry Stanley Jay Shapiro James Madison High School, 3787 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11229
Modern chemistry involves investigating the properties of substances with electronic instrumentation. Virtuallv any standard research facility has UV, IR, visible, and flame spectrophotometers, an NMR, digital pH meters, microgram analytical balances, and gas and mass spectrometers. Each issue of this Journal begins with a half-dozen pages describing the latest in laboratory equipment. An adequate advanced placement chemistry course in a high school should, thus, provide some hands-on, or at least eyes-on, experience with some of this paraphernalia. T o enrich the course at Madison High School a special, but simple, collaboration was established with Brooklyn College's prestigious chemistry department.
Schedule of Vlslts to Brooklyn College
On four Friday afternoons, when the college is quiet, the .Madison advanced placement chemistry class assembles at the Chemistry Department of Brooklyn College. The class has thoroughly discussed the laboratory exercises beforehand, and all students have been warned of all possible hazards. They bring their own safety glasses and laboratory notebooks. The October lab involves the gravimetric determination of the number of waters of hvdration onvarious hydrated salts. The procedure is one carried out in most high schools, but for this exercise, 15 electronic balances are available. Two doctoral candidates (closer in age to the students than to their teacher) serve as laboratory instructors for the afternoon. After this lab, a demonstration of the properties of liquid nitrogen is performed. In December, the students are shown how to use the flame photometers a t the college. In this lab, the students must first calibrate the instruments and run a dilution series to obtain a standardized curve. They then test their own urine for sodium ion concentration. In conjunction with this lab, the students are shown the operation of the department's mass spectrometer and electron spin resonance spectrometer. A professor discusses how these instruments are used in his research. In March. one of Brooklvn Colleee's nrofessors of analvtical chemistiy leads the stubents throuih a precise analytical procedure for the determination of the two pK,'s of sodium carbonate. For this potentiometric titration, each student has his or her own pH meter, electric stirrer, burets, and access to the analytical electronic balances. The first and second differential curves must be plotted and analyzed by each student before the professor will release them from his lab. (One student disappointed with misshaped endpoints volunteered to repeat the lab and stayed into the evening.)
324
Journal of Chemical Education
Two organic professors teach the last lab of the year, the monochlorination of 2-~rovanol. This time, each student has all the articulated organic-labware needed for the preparation and purification of the product. This lab takes about three hours to complete. During the lab period, the professors demonstrate how the infrared spectrophotometer and NMR spectrometer elucidate the structure of organic molecules.
Dlscusslon The lab visits are limited t o four a rear, two a term. This keeps the experience special and novel. The students get to meet several of the college faculty, get to work in four different laboratorv rooms. and eet a ta& of three different college chemistry courses. Although we have made no formal analysis of the program, all of the students seem to enjoy our trips. "When are we going to Brooklyn College next?" is a question raised frequently as we labor in our antiquated high school lab. Also the fact that no student, over the four years of the program, has asked to be excused from this after-school on Friday afternoon schedule is uniaue. Several of the students have liked their visits so much that they have arranged to continue their learning of chemistry other afternoons at the college. Last year, one student investigated the mechanism of how vitamin C aids in the absorption of iron from food supplements into the blood. This year, a student stumped by the problem of calibrating a computer-interfaced calorimeter found an expert professor to help solve the problem. Brooklyn College must feel that it, too, has benefited from the expense and trouble, since each year we are invited back. Six students from last year's classes were so enamored by the campus that they enrolled in science, computer. and premed-undergraduate programs at the college.. There have heen other sicns of the success of this Dropram. Other Brooklyn high scho& now send their stud&tsfDr a single lab experience a t the college. The Department of Physics a t Brooklyn College has matched the enthusiasm of the Department of Chemistry and now invites Madison's physics classes. We are also into our third year of a joint project with Kingsborough Community College. This program, for our less gifted, offers four labs a year to our junior class in prenursing (one lab on measurement, one on the physiology of exercise, one on bandaging and CPR, and one on careers in nursing and patient care). The collaborations have been wonderful for me. too. I feel like a junior member of strong college departments. Associatinn with these professional researchers has enriched my teaching of chemistry and continually renews my curiosity:
