EDITORIAL pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Farewell to the High School Triangle Picks Erica K. Jacobsen*,† and Laura E. Slocum*,‡ † ‡
The Dalles, Oregon 97058 United States University High School of Indiana, Carmel, Indiana 46032 United States
ABSTRACT: This Especially for High School Teachers article discusses recent changes to the format of the Journal of Chemical Education, including the discontinuation of the “triangle recommendation” feature previously used in each issue’s table of contents. Readers are asked to perform the exercise of browsing through this issue to investigate which articles catch their interest and why. The two authors of the article perform the exercise themselves and highlight several articles in this issue of JCE, along with why they selected each one. KEYWORDS: High School/Introductory Chemistry, Polymer Chemistry, Hands-On Learning/Manipulatives, Materials Science, Nanotechnology, Spectroscopy, Water/Water Chemistry FEATURE: Especially for High School Teachers
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urn back to the table of contents pages. When you are there, browse through the titles. What catches your eye? Flip to an article or two. What might you bookmark to return to later? Go ahead. Take a few minutes and come back when you are done. Finished? What did you find? This exercise mirrors the one regularly used by previous editor-in-chief John W. Moore as an opening activity for Journal of Chemical Education (JCE) workshops. He would typically give participants several minutes to leaf through whichever JCE issue we had included in the presentation bags. Then, he would ask for volunteers to share one or two articles that had interested them and to tell why. Invariably, people mentioned a wide variety of published items and reasons for their selections. One might have related to someone’s graduate-level research topic. Another might have found a hands-on activity relating to an upcoming topic in their curriculum. Someone else may have just been drawn in by a title or an intriguing graphic. Once in awhile, someone even happened upon an article they had worked on. Ask 10 different educators to highlight the pieces that most interest them or are most useful to them in an issue of JCE and you will likely get a large range of answers as well. Your choices may depend on your own background, your current classroom situation, and your own particular areas of interest or specialties. As I described in the November 2010 Especially for High School Teachers column,1 assistant editor Laura Slocum and I have “preleafed” through each issue of the Journal for you. We have browsed each abstract and/or article to be published in an issue and decided whether or not it should be marked with a 6 in the table of contents, denoting that we think it would be of interest to a high school chemistry educator. In that column, we asked readers to provide feedback on their use of the 6. Did they feel it still provided a desired service and was worth the time and effort to continue, or did they feel the time had come to discontinue its use? The response was, well, nothing. We did Copyright r 2011 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
not receive any comments one way or another in answer to the column. We did perform an informal survey during a high school teacher workshop, in which roughly half of the JCE subscribers present said that they used the triangles to guide their reading, while the other half did not. In the end, it was decided to discontinue their use. This is the first issue that does not include them in the table of contents. You may have noticed other fairly substantial changes to the look of the Journal. This issue also marks the introduction of a new ACS Publications composition system. One major change is that articles now also include abstracts and keywords in the print issue instead of just online, which can help readers to quickly determine whether an article receives their “personal 6”. Every time you pick up an issue or look at one online, you really are making your own “triangle picks”, as Laura and I have called them. They are based on you, your interests, your professional knowledge, and your own teaching situation. What were the top choices you found when you started this column? Why were you drawn to them? I did the exercise myself using just the titles and authors of the articles in this issue. First to catch my eye was “An Exploration of the Nanoworld with LEGO Bricks” (DOI: 10.1021/ed100673k). Why? I noticed the word “LEGO”. My own children spend chunks of time playing with this building toy at home, and I wondered how the bricks might be used in the classroom (Figure 1), particularly in connection with nanoscale science. From the list of titles, it looked like nanoscale chemistry was a recurring theme. The abstract of the laboratory experiment “Lithography of Polymer Nanostructures on Glass for Teaching Polymer Chemistry and Physics” (DOI: 10.1021/ed100358n) included an interesting graphic and had what seemed a simple materials list of “CD-Rs, C-clamps, an oven, and a freezer” and Published: March 18, 2011 524
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Journal of Chemical Education
EDITORIAL
Barlag and Nyasulu’s article “Waters of Hydration of Cupric Hydrates: A Comparison between Heating and Absorbance Methods” (DOI: 10.1021/ed1010008) provides a great way to incorporate Beer’s Law into the first lab that I do with my AP chemistry students. I have done several different hydration labs over the past eight years, but always wanted to do a lab that would be more challenging for the students and expose them to new equipment earlier in the year. The experiment that Barlag and Nyasulu describe in their article would do both of these things. My students would get to work with colorimeters and Beer’s Law, as well as review calculations in their first lab of the year. I like the incorporation of new ideas and review of old principles together. Erica and I plan to attend ChemEd 2011.3 Our submitted presentation proposal focuses on various ways for teachers to use activities and resources from JCE to focus on the last two quarters of IYC. We hope that you are making plans to attend ChemEd 2011 and look forward to seeing you there too.
Figure 1. LEGO building bricks can be used for molecular model building, including this polymer model showing a cross-link in polydimethylsiloxane. See Campbell, D. J.; Miller, J. D.; Bannon, S. J.; Obermaier, L. M. An Exploration of the Nanoworld with LEGO Bricks. J. Chem. Educ. 2011, 88; DOI: 10.1021/ed100673k.
said it could be used in the high school classroom. The last was “Household Water Treatments in Developing Countries” (DOI: 10.1021/ed100480p). My recent work looking into water-related articles from past issues of the Journal coupled with my husband’s interest in various resources for disaster preparedness, including effective water treatments, led me to mark this one for later reading.
’ LAURA’S TAKE ON THE ISSUE Celebrating the International Year of Chemistry (IYC) has made this year really special for me. As my advanced placement (AP) students were working on their chemical demonstrations to present to the other students at a morning assembly in their “Wizard Show”, I worked on how I could integrate IYC into it as well. Because the show was scheduled during the first quarter of IYC, I wanted to focus on that quarter’s theme, water. In the show, the AP students do the chemical demonstrations that they have developed and then explain the chemistry involved in the demonstration. A snowstorm a week before the show provided my inspiration—I ended up talking about the structure of water, the various ways water molecules come together to make snow, and showed snowflake models I constructed from a 3D magnetic molecular modeling kit.2 In “A Simple Experiment To Demonstrate the Effects of Cracks on Materials Strength” (DOI: 10.1021/ed1007298), Sauls describes how strips of paper can be used to help students understand how cracks in materials affect the strength of the material. He points out in his article that the study of the chemistry of materials is handled differently at every institution, but that simple experiments showing the effects of cracks on materials are essentially nonexistent. I had thought about this as I started to consider how I was going to focus on the materials theme for the third quarter of IYC and I am grateful that Sauls has provided teachers with a useful and easy to implement experiment for our courses in the fall.
’ PRECOLLEGE CHEMISTRY FEATURED ARTICLE Bagaria, H. G.; Dean, M. R.; Nichol, C. A.; Wong, M. S. SelfAssembly and Nanotechnology: Real-Time, Hands-On, and Safe Experiments for K 12 Students. J. Chem. Educ. 2011, 88 (DOI: 10.1021/ed100598y).
’ AUTHOR INFORMATION Corresponding Author
*E-mail: (E.K.J.)
[email protected]; (L.E.S.) lslocum@ universityhighschool.org.
’ REFERENCES (1) Jacobsen, E. K.; Slocum, L. E. J. Chem. Educ. 2010, 87, 1121 1122; DOI: 10.1021/ed1009046. (2) 3-D Molecular Designs, Snowflake Activity Overview. http:// www.3dmoleculardesigns.com/Snowflakes.pdf (accessed Mar 2011). (3) ChemEd 2011 Conference Home Page. http://www.chemed2011. com/ (accessed Mar 2011).
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