Chemical Education Today
Association Report: ACS Education Division
A History of ChemMatters Magazine by Michael J. Tinnesand
A New Publication for High School Students You might be interested to know that over a million high school students are currently enrolled in chemistry courses. Unfortunately, many of these students (perhaps even you) feel their study of chemistry is irrelevant. The American Chemical Society wants to change this attitude and prove to you that chemistry is not only a relevant subject but an exciting, dynamic, and necessary part of your education.
Those were the opening words from interim co-editors Kathy Dombrink and David Tanis1 in the first issue of ChemMatters magazine, published in February 1983. Convincing high school students that chemistry is an exciting, dynamic, and necessary part of their education may seem a Sisyphean challenge, but it is an essential element in teaching. It is a goal that ChemMatters has continued to pursue for the past 22 years, bringing stories to high school students that show how chemistry is important in their everyday lives. The idea for the magazine came in 1981 from the ACS Society Committee on Education’s (SOCED) Ad hoc Committee to Study an ACS Publication Directed Toward High School Students. The ad hoc committee was chaired by the late Marjorie Gardner, a leading chemical educator, who was then at the University of Maryland. The ad hoc committee was put in place, in part, to address the information vacuum at the high school level left by the demise of SciQuest. SciQuest was an ACS publication that first appeared in April 1979 as a re-conceptualized version of Chemistry magazine. A Legacy of Publications Chemistry magazine itself had considerable evolution over the years. It began publication in 1926 as The Chemistry Leaflet, a weekly student supplement to the Journal of Chemical Education for high school teachers.2 It was supported first by the Division of Chemical Education and later the Science Service, which changed its name to Chemistry in 1944. ACS acquired the magazine from Science Service in 1964, naming Theodor Benfey, then at Earlham College as its editor. Chemistry was targeted editorially to provide intellectually demanding and stimulating material for the top 40 percent of high school or college chemistry students, and their teachers. The magazine enjoyed some success, with the circulation rising to over 30,000 copies, but was terminated in 1978 as too expensive and somewhat elitist (1). In 1979 Chemistry was recast as SciQuest. It was believed that SciQuest, which covered all sciences not just chemistry, would attract a broader audience, including more of the general public. Regrettably, SciQuest was not able to generate a large enough circulation to meet its financial goals, which led to its termination as well.
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In its report to SOCED, the ad hoc committee cited the growing commitment of ACS to high school chemistry and to initiatives contributing to the public understanding of science. The ad hoc committee strongly urged SOCED to support the development of a new magazine for high school students and teachers that would focus on chemistry, and its connection to students’ everyday lives. The committee also suggested that there should be an active link from ACS through teachers to the students served by the magazine. Standards of importance to any publication were also stressed in this case— among them a high standard for quality, realistic costs, creative content and format and writing at an appropriate level for the target group (students in high school chemistry). The ad hoc group also had a number of recommendations for content, including science news and commentary, chemistry of everyday living, kitchen chemistry, take home experiments, career briefs, games, puzzles and cartoons. It was also recommended that the magazine be published only four times a year, as market research indicated that most high school teachers felt this level of frequency would be the most useful to them. SOCED, then chaired by Stanley Kirschner of Wayne State University, agreed with the recommendations from the ad hoc committee and, at the Fall 1982 ACS National Meeting, gave its approval for the creation of the new magazine. Shaping the Magazine James DeRose, a retired teacher who had taught chemistry at Marple Newtown High School in Pennsylvania and was Publications Coordinator of this Journal, was appointed chair of the first steering committee for the new magazine and in this capacity provided much of the crucial early guidance. Other members of the initial steering committee were Marjorie Gardner, W. Thomas Lippincott, and Robert Roe, Jr. The role of the steering group was to implement the recommendations of the ad hoc committee and to help formulate editorial and policy guidelines for the publication. In the winter of 1982, a national contest was held to select a name for the new publication. There were two winners (who independently submitted the same name): Deborah Kuchnir,3 a high school student from Elmhurst, Illinois, and Mickey Sarquis, then as now at Miami University, Ohio. From its inception, the magazine excelled at connecting chemistry topics to activities students found familiar and interesting. The first issue (February, 1983) included an article about scuba diving and how the gas laws help explain safe diving techniques. In a department called “Calculating Chemistry,” students used the gas laws to calculate the mass of the Earth’s atmosphere. In “Hacker’s Anonymous”, students were invited to write in for a copy of the BASIC program titled Balloon that calculated gas pressure, volume, and temperature for a sample of gas. You could get the program for either a Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80 or Apple II computer!
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Chemical Education Today
The style of graphical design for student publications has changed dramatically over the years. The Chemistry Leaflet (left) is from 1931; the first issue of ChemMatters in 1983 is second from left; the two others are from recent issues.
Asimov and Seaborg Write for ChemMatters The third issue of ChemMatters in October 1983 was the first edited by David Robson, a chemistry and physics teacher at Towson High School in Towson, MD. This issue was organized around the variety of patterns by which atoms are organized. The first article in that issue was written by Isaac Asimov, author of over 500 books, including many classics in science fiction, as well as many books about real science. Asimov’s article profiled what several kinds of atoms might look like if viewed by an observer shrinking down to the atomic level. In February 1984 (years before the first CSI television show!) the first Mystery Matters feature article presenting reallife forensic chemistry appeared. Author Jay A. Young wrote about an accident that led to the injury of a farmer’s wife— the cause was the buildup of carbon dioxide in a pump house due to natural reactions in the soil. Mystery Matters continues as a feature in ChemMatters today. In the April 1985 issue, ChemMatters received a letter to the editor from Nobel laureate Glenn Seaborg. Seaborg submitted a comment on a Periodic Table that ChemMatters had published, based on recommendations from the ACS Committee on Nomenclature. Seaborg noted that while the ChemMatters version of the table had “much to recommend it”, he preferred a version published in Chemical & Engineering News. He also commented on the naming system for newly discovered elements, suggesting that the method he preferred was using the atomic number of unnamed elements as the name, rather than the cumbersome unnilpentium for element 105. He suggested the name for the tetrafluoride of element 106 should be (106) tetrafluoride. Who could have guessed at the time that 20 years later the name for such a compound would be seaborgium tetrafluoride, as element 106 was later named in honor of Seaborg’s many contributions to chemistry? Another prolific contributor to ChemMatters was noted chemistry historian, Derek Davenport, now retired from Purdue University. Davenport wrote a total of 14 articles for the magazine, including some very popular features such as a biographical sketch of Joseph Priestley and a 1986 article
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titled “Nitrous Oxide–Laughing Gas”. Davenport also served as Technical Review Coordinator for a number of years. The technical review of each issue, to ensure that the chemistry is accurate, is an essential part of the editorial process and remains a key component of process to this day. Contests, Prizes, Fame! Many of the early issues of ChemMatters included student contests. One of the early and very popular contests was to calculate the number of helium atoms in the Goodyear blimp, America. There were nearly 1,400 entries and 565 correct answers. Three students had their names chosen from the correct answers for the grand prize, a ride on the Goodyear blimp —the winners even got a chance to fly the blimp. One of the winners, Hans Weber,4 then attending St. Joseph’s High School in South Bend, IN, said, “I’ll never forget when the pilot turned to me and said, ‘Do you want to drive?’” The appearance of the magazine has evolved significantly over the years. The first major redesign occurred in 1993 on the 10th anniversary of the publication. ChemMatters went full-color in October 1996 and went through another smaller redesign in 1998. The first Classroom Guide appeared with the February 1990 issue. It consisted of two pages of background information on the articles and instructions for a lab activity. These guides (now called Teacher’s Guides) are still a popular feature of the magazine. Starting with the February 1997 issue, the print Teacher’s Guide was replaced by an online version available on the Web at http://www.chemistry.org/education/ chemmatters.html (accessed Nov 2006). The online Teacher’s Guide for the October 2004 issue ran some 31 pages and included extensive background information, reading guides, connections to chemistry concepts, suggestions for student projects, and much more—a considerable improvement over the original two-pager. For example, the October, 2006 Teacher’s Guide is 68 pages long.
ChemMatters Collection February 1993 marked another advance in the use of technology with the publication of the first ChemMatters CD,
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Association Report: ACS Education Division a disk that contained all the articles from the first 10 years of the magazine. The disk was a digital replacement for the huge amount of shelf space many schools devoted to their collection of back issues of ChemMatters. Version 2.0 of the CD was produced in 1998 and Version 3.0, containing the first 20 years of ChemMatters (1983–2003) in 2004. Hundreds of people have contributed to the success of ChemMatters over the past 20 plus years. Dave Robson guided the magazine for nearly 15 years and deserves a great deal of credit for establishing the editorial character of a “ChemMatters story” and the look of the magazine. He was aided by Lynn Sibly as managing editor for the first nine years, and by Mary Olenick for the next six years. Robson resigned in April 1997 to focus on full-time teaching. At that time, ACS made the decision to bring the editorial function inhouse as an ACS staff position. K. Michael Shea filled the editor position and helped establish the magazine’s design and production team at ACS headquarters in Washington, DC. Shea was succeeded by Helen Herlocker, editor until April 2003, when she was promoted to Manager of High School Science and replaced by Kevin McCue. McCue was instrumental in getting ChemMatters for sale online for the first time and for a number of technical improvements in the Teacher’s Guide format and content. In 2006 Carl Heltzel, from Transylvania University in Lexington, KY, joined the magazine as editor. ChemMatters has won nearly 50 awards since it began publication in 1983, including recognition from the Educational Press Association, the Society for Technical Communication, APEX Awards for Publication Excellence, and NASA-Outstanding Educational Product Awards. The awards from NASA resulted from a very productive partnership between ChemMatters and NASA that began in 1999. The ACS was approached by NASA officials interested in doing educational outreach for an upcoming satellite mission that would deal primarily with atmospheric chemistry. The mission (eventually named AURA) was launched in July 2004. As part of the lead-up to the launch, ChemMatters produced a series of special issues, dedicated to presenting the chemistry and people behind the mission. NASA support allowed the special issues to be sent to every chemistry teacher in the U.S.
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Demystifying Everyday Chemistry While the magazine has evolved over the years, the goal of “communicating chemistry as an exciting, dynamic, and necessary part of education” that was set in the first issue remains as important today as it was then. A good ChemMatters story is still one that connects a reader’s everyday life to the chemistry that matters. Teachers continue to appreciate the lively and interesting articles that support and enhance the chemistry curriculum. Subscribe to ChemMatters by phoning 800/227-5558 or by going online at http://chemistry.org/education/chem matters.html (accessed Feb 2007). Notes 1. Both Kathy Dombrink and David Tanis taught high school, Dombrink at McCluer North High School, Florissant, MO and Tanis at Holland Christian High School, Holland, MI. 2. The Chemistry Leaflet, student supplement to the Journal of Chemical Education, was “a weekly publication designed to interest the student taking chemistry for the first time”. It was published weekly during the school year. Pauline G. Beery was the JCE associate editor in charge of The Chemistry Leaflet. 3. Deborah Kuchnir (now Deborah Kuchnir Fygenson) went on to earn a B.S. degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton. She is currently an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. 4. Hans Weber went on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard and received a Master’s degree in computer science at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Literature Cited 1. Benfey, Theodor. Visions, Achievements, and Challenges of the Division of Chemical Education during the Early Years. J. Chem. Educ. 2003, 80, 651–657.
Michael J. Tinnesand is Associate Director, Education Division, American Chemical Society, 1155 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036;
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