Chemical Education Today
In This Issue The Cover: Inorganic Photochemistry Redux This month’s cover was quilted from false-color luminescence images of a model of an airplane wing undergoing wind-tunnel testing. The colors indicate different pressures on different parts of the surface and are obtained from the intensity of fluorescence from a pressure sensing paint (see the paper by Gouterman that begins on page 679). This is one of thirteen papers in this issue that were generated from presentations at the symposium on inorganic photochemistry at the ACS national meeting last fall in Orlando, FL. The symposium, organized by Kirk S. Schanze and Russell H. Schmehl, updates a symposium, “Inorganic Photochemistry: State of the Art”, that took place at
The ACS National Meeting
much appreciate the excellent organization of the high school session by Bob Zafran and the willingness of so many teachers to share their views about the Journal. There is more on this subject in Emory Howell’s column on page 615. We plan similar sessions at future meetings, beginning with ChemEd ’97 in Minneapolis. Also mentioned in Tom Wildeman’s report on the ACS meeting are the awards in chemical education that were presented. Arthur B. Ellis received the ACS George C. Pimentel Award in Chemical Education, sponsored by the Union Carbide Corporation. Robert D. Becker received the James Bryant Conant Award in High School Chemistry Teaching. Part of Bob’s presentation is pictured on this page: an innovative use of triangular pieces of Polaroid material and Karo syrup to produce a colorful demonstration that anyone could do on an overhead projector.
Photo by David B. Shaw
This month has been more hectic than most around Journal House because many of your staff were at the ACS National Meeting in San Francisco, attending sessions and staffing the JCE booth at the Chemical Exposition. (By the way, the booth is a great place to meet and chat with the editor, high school editor, book review editor, and the editor of JCE Software. Stop by if you are at an ACS National Meeting.) This meeting included a symposium honoring J. J. Lagowski for his 17 years of exemplary service as editor of the Journal, and so it was a special one for the Journal staff. Following the symposium there was a moonlight (and comet Hale-Bopp-light) cruise around San Francisco Bay that was attended by three of the four living editors of the Journal: Bill Kieffer, Joe Lagowski, and John Moore. They can be seen celebrating the Lagowski symposium on page 614, which is also where you will find a lot more information about the ACS National Meeting. Much of that information has been provided by Tom Wildeman, Program Chair of DivCHED. Photographs of the meeting were contributed by Maureen Scharberg, David Shaw, and Tom. Another meeting highlight for the Journal was a presentation at the ACS DivCHED High School Day program by Emory Howell and John Moore. The two editors received supportive and constructive feedback about the Journal from a large contingent of teachers who found the room even though it was down one floor, around the corner, follow the hall, and turn right! We very
an ACS meeting in Seattle in 1983. The earlier one, organized by Morton Hoffman, was published in the October 1983 issue of the Journal and is still available as a reprint volume from JCE Books (see page 635, ref 1). Schanze and Schmehl provide an overview of the symposium papers beginning on page 633. Many full-color illustrations from these papers, including the two false-color images of airplane wings that form the cover, appear in this overview. This issue in combination with the earlier state-ofthe-art reprint volume provides an excellent overview of a very important area of research that has broad applicability to biochemistry, solid-state chemistry, and chemical sensing.
The ACS Award for Encouraging Women into careers in the Chemical Sciences was presented to Mary E. Thompson, and the ACS Award for En-
couraging Disadvantaged Students into Careers in the Chemical Sciences was presented to Billy Joe Evans. Both of these awards are sponsored by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. The ACS Award for Research at an Undergraduate Institution, sponsored by the Research Corporation, was presented to Gary C. DeFotis.
Cooperative Learning Tom Wildeman comments in his report on the San Francisco meeting that there were many symposia that dealt with the process of chemical education rather than the content. This issue has lots of content material in the inorganic photochemistry symposium, but we have not ignored process. Beginning on page 715 and running through page 726 are three papers that deal with cooperative learning. Bowen and Phelps describe demonstration-based cooperative testing in general chemistry, a technique that makes assessment of student progress more realistic and effective. Kogut indicates that cooperative learning can enhance performance in general chemistry, and Dougherty shows that grade/study-performance contracts and cooperative learning can help students to learn organic chemistry, retaining a much larger fraction of students than traditional methods. To complement these papers, the Chemical Education Today section provides summaries of related papers from other journals by William Robinson (page 622) and an annotated bibliography by Susan Nurrenbern and Robinson (page 623). Lots of food for thought here—and lots of ideas that can be tried out in your classes soon!
Vol. 74 No. 6 June 1997 • Journal of Chemical Education
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