EDUCATION
CHEM Study Readies for Expanded Trials New high school chemistry course will be tested in about 125 schools next year, after good response in preliminary run
"I found the material (the CHEM Study course), written under extreme pressure in the summer of 1960, to be a fresh and stimulating introduction to the science of chemistry. If teachers can be recruited or retrained to handle it, I believe that those school districts which see fit to adopt this new program . . . or the alternative material supplied by the Chemical Bond Approach Study, will send their graduates to college with a better understanding of chemistry than students in many colleges have after a year of college chemistry. Similar course changes are being tested in mathematics, biology, and physics. The over-all result should be a great strengthening of the course content of science teaching in our secondary schools!9 DR. GLENN T. SEABORG, chairman, U.S. Atomic Energy
Commission, and chairman, Steering Committee of CHEM Study, before the National Science Teachers Association, Chicago, 111., March 28, 1961
Just after school closes in June, the CHEM Study (Chemical Education Material Study) staff will meet in Berkeley, Calif., to produce a revised text, a laboratory manual, and a teacher's guide for the course. These materials plus several films and a manual of lecture demonstrations will be ready for use when school starts next fall. At that time, about 100 new high schools throughout the U.S. will introduce the course to their classes. One school abroad—in Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa—will also try CHEM Study. The CHEM Study staff says it is pleased with the response it is getting to the general philosophy of the course, now being used by 1500 students in 24 California high schools. Teachers participating in these first classroom tests have been attending weekly meetings during the school year where they discuss teachability and pacing of the course and suitability of the experiments. They say that CHEM Study is much more exciting 48
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than chemistry courses they have taught before. And they believe the idea of introducing new topics through experiments has great potential. Students taking the course also like its emphasis on laboratory work, although some feel they need more instruction on how to organize data and draw conclusions. Others feel the lack of good math training. Text Plus Lab. The CHEM Study course is divided into five major parts, and each section of the text is integrated with experiments. It consists of an introduction (two weeks); General Overview of Chemistry (seven weeks); Chemical Reactions (nine weeks); Microscopic View of Matter (nine weeks); and Descriptive Chemistry ( nine weeks ). Dr. Lloyd E. Malm, on leave from the University of Utah, serves as assistant director of CHEM Study and editor of its laboratory manual. He says that student reaction to the introductory section of the course has been favorable. But in the overview sec-
tion, he adds, the staff misjudged the amount of time needed to cover the subject matter. Instead of the seven weeks allowed, the test classes have required about 11 weeks to handle it. A major problem, therefore, in revising the text this summer will be to reduce the number of new ideas that teachers must introduce. The lab work for the overview section emphasizes the quantitative aspects of chemistry more than is usual in high school chemistry courses, Dr. Malm points out. But students respond well to the experiments. Most of them handle centigram balances as readily as the average college freshman, he says. In presenting the subject of chemical reactions, CHEM Study depends heavily on a film produced by the ACS under a grant from the Sloan Foundation—"An Introduction to Reaction Kinetics," with Dr. Henry Eyring and Dr. Earl Mortensen as collaborators. Dr. Malm says the staff believes this 13-minute film does an outstanding job of explaining an abstract topic to a broad spectrum of high school students. It finds the animated sequences and the repeated use of the potential energy-reaction coordinate diagram especially helpful. Further, CHEM Study believes that similar films correlated with other parts of its text will also enhance the course. Currently, it has three films— "Catalysis," "Equilibrium," and "Nitrogen and Nitric Acid"—well along in production. And work on scripts for "Chemical Bonding and Atomic Structure," and "Radiation and Energy Levels" is under way. Although the CHEM Study staff has no classroom experience with the last two sections of the course (just now being taught), it believes it has set the tone for the theoretical section, "Microscopic View of Matter," in a unique manner. In the chapter, "Believing in Atoms," Dr. Malm points out, the "garbage collector theory" analogy introduces the student to the
score for the 1500 students was 19. On the second exam (chapters 6-11) the average dropped slightly, to about 17, with a range from three to 34. Students are now taking their third exam; a fourth exam is being prepared for them, and a comprehensive exam w ill be their final test on the course. Dr. Malm says that aptitude tests indicate that this year's test group has slightly higher than average ability, compared to a typical high school chemistry class. However, he believes there are enough students below the 50th percentile included to describe
forming chemical bonds. Because of the longer time required for the first sections of the course, Dr. Malm says, trial teachers this year may not be able to get very far into the descriptive chemistry section. But he hopes most schools will be able to include some of this important coverage. He says it is designed to give students a good working knowledge of the Periodic Table; it will also systema-
tize descriptive chemistry for them and reinforce their knowledge of principles they have studied earlier. Exams. In constructing exams for the CHExM Study course, Dr. Malm says, the staff has tried to select questions that will test students' ability to analyze new experimental situations rather than reproduce memorized facts. He says student performance on the first test (chapters 1-6) was almost ideal from the measurement point of view. The exam was compiled for an expected average of 17 correct answers out of 35 questions. Average
EXPERIMENT 4. CHEM Study students learn how to use the centigram balance early in the course
EXPERIMENT 2. By the time CHEM Study students investigate melting point, energy effects, and products of combustion of a burning candle, they have usually found out for themselves what chemistry is all about
"circumstantial type of evidence" on which chemists must base their theoretical models concerning the nature of a t o m s , electrons, a n d their role in
EXPERIMENT 1. CHEM Study students make careful observations of a burning candle during their first lab assignment.
Some students think the experiment is too easy until they compare their own notes with data given in their textbooks APRIL
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the performance of this group and give a fair sampling on the course. CHEM Study expects to train the 100 new teachers for its 1961-62 class room tests at two National Science Foundation institutes this summer, scheduled for Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and Harvey Mudd Col lege, Claremont, Calif. Readers who would like to have the revised CHEM Study text and lab manual, at a cost of $5.00, should re serve copies by writing to CHEM Study, Harvey Mudd College, Clare mont, Calif., before Aug. 1.
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The Chemists' Club (New York City) will have three grants of about $500 each available in June to help high school chemistry teachers of the New York Metropolitan area (includes northern New Jersey, Long Island, and western Connecticut) further their educations. Teachers who are con tinuing their studies but who have not yet received a doctor's degree may ap ply for the funds by writing a letter (not later than May 1) to the Scholar ship Committee, The Chemists' Club, 52 East 41st St., New York 17, N.Y., giving the reason why they need the funds and a proposal showing how they will be used.
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McCrone Research Institute, 451 East 31st St., Chicago 16, 111., has tuitionfree scholarships available for a threeweek course in chemical microscopy to be offered by the institute July 10-28. Letters of application should be sent to the institute by May 15.
