Chemical Education Today
Especially for High School Teachers by Erica K. Jacobsen
An Earth Day That Counts The bus belched diesel fumes as we traveled the few blocks to the local park. Nearly a hundred students converged on the small park to pick up litter from the ground. We had to ration the limited trash available. Each Trees near me have gone student picked up maybe To build my house of perm ‘Nance one or two pieces, if you Now I must give back didn’t count the cigarette butts behind the baseball James Kelly, Pittsburgh, PA backstop, which no one 10th Grade really wanted to touch. Pittsburgh Section Afterward, the buses carried us back to school. Earth Day was over, except for the sale of a few earth- and animal-themed t-shirts. It wasn’t quite how I had pictured an Earth Day celebration. How could this picture change? What could Earth Day mean to us as teachers? To students? How can we create an Earth Day celebration that counts? The Journal of Chemical Education stands ready to help. For Earth Day, April 22, 2004, the American Chemical Society (ACS) has selected the theme “What do you know about H2O?” To provide a month or two of time to prepare, JCE offers this February 2004 issue as an Earth Day resource. Multiple articles and the JCE Classroom Activity focus on water quality and pollution. Students may be unaware that a majority of the world’s population does not have access to clean water. Heinhorst and Cannon (p 170) summarize several articles from Nature that report on global issues surrounding water. One article describes the problems faced by Bangladesh, where thousands of freshwater wells established by the UN turned out to contain high levels of arsenic. Wang and Wai devote an extensive article to this topic in “Arsenic in Drinking Water–A Global Environmental Problem” (p 207). They include information on health problems related to ingesting water contaminated with arsenic, along with how arsenic levels can be first measured and then lowered. Maps highlight parts of the world that have groundwater contaminated with arsenic, including several states in the U.S. This month’s JCE Classroom Activity (p 224A) also provides students with food (water?) for thought regarding clean, pure water. In the Activity, students make a water filtration column out of a 2-liter plastic beverage bottle and layers of activated charcoal, sand, and gravel. They then create a sample of water that no one would want to drink (see the photos in the table of contents!) and filter it with the homemade column. The results are amazing. The majority of the Activity procedure is simple enough that even students on the elementary level could gain from the experience. Earth Day doesn’t have to end when April 22 is over. The article “Caring for the Environment While Teaching
www.JCE.DivCHED.org
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Secondary School Featured Articles 䊕 News from Online: Green Chemistry, by Erich S. Uffelman, p 172. 䊕 JCE Classroom Activity: #60. Water Filtration, by Erica K. Jacobsen, p 224A. 䊕 Arsenic in Drinking Water–A Global Environmental Problem, by Joanna Shaofen Wang and Chien M. Wai, p 207.
Organic Chemistry” (p 232), while written from the perspective of university courses, provides an excellent idea for high school educators. The authors engage students in identifying the products, waste or otherwise, that will be generated in a particular lab experiment. They then consider how the materials can be managed and disposed of in accordance with local regulations. Often students arrive in lab, perform the procedure, and after writing a lab report, the experience is over. The teacher cleans up and takes care of disposal. Why not bring students into the picture for certain labs? When they leave your classroom, they will be more likely to consider the effects of what they pour down the drain or throw in the trash. How else can we motivate students? Look to ACS! In 2003, ACS sponsored the Chemists Celebrate Earth Day Poetry Contest, with the theme “ChemisTREE”. Students in grades 3–12 were each asked to write a haiku illustrating the link between chemistry and trees; students in grades K–2 could use any poetic style. The winning haiku for grades 9–12 is on this page. The others can be seen on p 191. This year, ACS offers another contest to encourage students to think about their water supply and its quality. Students may submit their own music videos relating to the “What do you know about H2O?” theme. For more information, visit the ACS Earth Day Web site: Chemists Celebrate Earth Day at http://chemistry.org/earthday (accessed Dec 2003). Make it an Earth Day that counts. What do your students know about H2O? Planning Ahead—National Chemistry Week 2004 The theme for National Chemistry Week 2004 is “Health and Wellness”. Do you have a great idea that complements this theme in your curriculum? Submit it to the Journal so that other teachers can benefit from your activity, lab experiment, or demonstration. We are especially looking for ideas for a NCW Activity for the JCE Classroom Activity series. Editing of October articles finishes up in July, so don’t delay! Need more lead time for a submission? Start thinking about the 2005 theme “The Joy of Toys”. Do you have questions or suggestions? Contact Erica Jacobsen at
[email protected].
Vol. 81 No. 2 February 2004
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Journal of Chemical Education
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