Chemical Education Today edited by
Erica K. Jacobsen Associate Editor, Precollege Chemistry
Laura E. Slocum
To 6 or Not To 6?
Assistant Editor, Precollege Chemistry
Erica K. Jacobsen and Laura E. Slocum
The question in the title (with apologies to Shakespeare) is one that Laura and I ask ourselves every month as each new issue of the Journal of Chemical Education moves closer to its publication date. We receive a list of the articles tentatively slated for the upcoming issue, and go to work in the electronic submission system. Using each article's manuscript number, we access the final version sent by the author(s), and based on a read-through of the abstract and/or the manuscript, determine whether, in our opinion, we think the article would be useful to a high school educator. If the decision is yes, that article receives a 6 in the issue's table of contents, and the article is made part of the JCE high school Web site, CLIC. Laura and I each devise our own list of these “triangle recommendations” for each issue, making notes along the way as to why we think a particular article is useful, or whether we might highlight it in the Especially for High School Teachers column. Once our two lists come together, we discuss the articles where our recommendations do not at first agree, and come to a consensus. Inevitably, there are some of these in every issue. It is a subjective decision, as Laura and I each come from a unique background and bring a different viewpoint to the task. For example, Laura's current experience teaching high school organic and biochemistry courses gives her a certain insight as to which articles related to those topics would be useful. If any high school educator who reads the Journal were to generate his or her own list, it would likely differ from ours as well. The question in the title has been asked by JCE's high school editors since the triangle icon's introduction into the table of contents in late 1996. The icon was conceived as a tool to underscore the fact that high school educators are an important part of the Journal's audience, to visually be able to point out to high school educators that JCE contained content of direct interest and use to them, and to possibly save busy readers time as they sat down with an issue. It has been a service over its nearly 15 years of use. The Journal's recent copublishing agreement with ACS Publications has led to various changes in workflow. After nearly a year of learning how JCE procedures could most effectively mesh with those of ACS Publications, it seems the time has come to ask readers the question “To 6 or not to 6?” Does this tool still provide a desired service to the majority of the high school educator audience of the Journal? Do some readers view it as more of a separation of this particular readership, than a service to them? Are you aware of the 6 mark and its use? Do you use this to guide your reading of each issue? With the limited time and energy available to accomplish the tasks and goals of the JCE precollege chemistry section, would you prefer that we continue to take the time to provide this tool? Or would you prefer we commit that time to other projects? For example, we could continue to devote time to determine how we can best alert preservice teachers to JCE's value as a teaching and professional development tool. We could
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look into how to best share resources with teachers, including the use of webinars in addition to which conference presentations could provide the most “bang for the buck”. We could seriously investigate the “sky's the limit” idea that came up at this summer's Journal long-term planning retreat, of how one could go about providing a JCE subscription for every high school science teacher in the United States, and beyond. Laura and I are here to serve you. Please share your feedback with us (jacobsen@jce. acs.org and
[email protected]) regarding the use of the 6 recommendations, as well as including a separate high school portion on the JCE Web site, CLIC. No matter the final decision, Laura and I still plan to continue to look through each issue's articles in order to highlight information in this column about those that especially catch our interest. JCE Classroom Activities CD #51-100 Now Available This information was included in last month's column, but because of the limited time this CD will be available, it bears repeating. The second JCE Classroom Activity reprint CD, containing Activities #51-100, is now complete and available for purchase. A limited number of the CDs have been produced, so order yours now! This and any other CDs and paper products previously offered by JCE (Classroom Activity reprint CD #1, the Sherlock Holmes book, Joy of Toys CD, CLIPs CD) will only be available for a limited time, probably through the end of 2010. The cost for each CD is $20 for orders in the United States and $30 for orders outside the United States; discounts are available for those purchasing more than one of the above-listed CDs. To order, please visit the JCE Store at http://store.jce.divched.org/ (accessed Sep 2010), or email
[email protected] for a PDF of the order form. Laura's Take on the Issue I have always been captivated by the chemistry of phosphorus, but I have also been a bit afraid of it. However, at a past Biennial Conference on Chemical Education in Waterloo (1998), I learned how to light a Bunsen burner by snapping my fingers with red phosphorus between them. It was probably not the safest or the smartest thing I ever did, but I never got hurt and it sure seemed “cool” at the time. I no longer do this, yet I have missed demonstrating the wonderful chemistry of phosphorus. Fortunately, in this month's issue, Golden et al. (DOI: 10.1021/ed1002652) share their amazing phosphorus flamethrower demonstration and I now once again have a great way to demonstrate the chemistry of phosphorus to my students. (See Figure 1.) Smith, Edionwe, and Michel (DOI: 10.1021/ed100538q) provide another way for me to engage my advanced placement
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r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc. pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc Vol. 87 No. 11 November 2010 10.1021/ed1009046 Published on Web 09/15/2010
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Figure 1. Final rapid oxidation of white phosphorus, P4, to produce bright flame during the phosphorus flamethrower demonstration. See “Phosphorus Flamethrower: A Demonstration Using Red and White Allotropes of Phosphorus”, J. Chem. Educ. 2010, 87 (DOI: 10.1021/ ed1002652).
(AP) students. They connect the predict-observe-explain model that is very familiar to high school teachers, with conductimetric titrations. I like conductimetric titrations, but have not done them for about 10 years with my advanced students because I decided to stay with the same approach the
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students had already used in my first-year chemistry courses. However, I miss teaching my advanced students new techniques and conductimetric titrations are not difficult to teach. Incorporating the predict-observe-explain model requires the students to make predictions about what they expect to see during their titration, then observe during the experiment, and finally explain any differences between their predictions and observations. I already use this model in many labs; this article and the authors' suggestions have led me to put conductimetric titrations back into my AP curriculum this year. As I read through Pence and Williams' article on ChemSpider (DOI: 10.1021/ed100697w), I visited the Web site, and kept telling myself I would search for “just one more thing”. Finally, I stopped and just added it to my AP Chemistry page. ChemSpider is awesome! I thank the authors for sharing this valuable resource and all its wonderful materials with everyone. As soon as I read the article, I pointed my AP Chemistry students to this resource as well. My students' main question about the site was, “Why didn't you tell us about this last year?” Precollege Chemistry Featured Article 6Golden, M. L.; Person, E. C.; Bejar, M.; Golden, D. R.; Powell, J. M. Phosphorus Flamethrower: A Demonstration Using Red and White Allotropes of Phosphorus. J. Chem. Educ. 2010, 87, (DOI: 10.1021/ed1002652).
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r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
