Chemistry – a science lifesaver!

Lance Chapman writes:

We finally finished our unit on force and motion and I have finally begun to introduce the fundamentals of chemistry to my eighth-graders. It really is amazing just how kinesthetic they are. With force and motion, I had a very difficult time finding a plethora of hands-on activities. But the beauty of chemistry is that I can perform experiments daily and never exhaust my supply!

I love the fact that I have 25 to 30 eighth-graders who ask each morning, "Are we doing an experiment today, Mr. Chapman?" That curiosity alone fuels my desire to continue finding awesome, standard-driven experiments that will make the material accessible for my students.

When I was teaching phase changes to my students, I brought in dry ice and showed them what happens when you place it in room-temperature water. After seeing the solid transform directly into a gas, one of my struggling students asked a truly brilliant question: "What would happen if you put that stuff in a water bottle and put a balloon over the top? Would the balloon explode?" He had just learned a fundamental science concept on his own: the expanding nature of gas! I was thrilled!

Whether the topic is viscosity, thermal conductivity, ductility or any other seemingly difficult science concept, I am not feeding my students the answers anymore. In fact, I don't even tell them explicitly what the science words mean. Instead, they find the answers by experimentation and inquiry.

I'm not only enjoying teaching more, but am able to relax more in the classroom since my students are familiarizing themselves with independent discovery of concepts.