Scenes from the Hood

I love taking pictures of my students working in the lab. I can't help myself. When the kids are really getting into an experiment I want to capture it. As soon as they start to work, I pull out my phone. This week I started a new series I'm calling "Scenes from the Hood". I decided to try to take pictures of my students doing lab work from the inside of the fume hood. I've had the hood in my room for only one year. It still feels like such a luxury item. The novelty has definitely not worn off yet. Why is ventilation a luxury item, you ask... Don't get me started! Let's just celebrate the fact that now I have it and I can do more interesting chemistry with my students because of it.

Ventilation in the chemistry lab is an important part of a safe environment. Keeping the air clear is a matter of personal care for a chemistry teacher and the students. As a teacher, I am in the lab at least 6 hours a day, compared to my students 80-minutes. I am so happy to have a safer work environment with proper ventilation in the lab. Anyone who doesn't have good ventilation, you can go to Flinn's safety training for a short video about the importance of ventilation that you can use to support your case with administrators.

This week my Chemistry Honors students did the Pomfret School classic: The Iron and Sulfur lab. It's an awesome start to our lab work because of the flames, the smells, the breaking of the glass test tube, hydrochloric acid, heating with the Bunsen burner, and iron filings/magnets. I can't think of any other lab that "has it all" like this one. Add to that the fact that they are all scared to do anything because of the lab safety talk, and you have a pretty memorable experience for the kids.

Here are my "Scenes from the Hood" shots for the week.

These two are watching the bubbles in the gas producing reactions of Fe and FeS with HCl.

Wafting the gas to observe the smell (rotten eggs comes to mind).

These girls are looking into the fume hood for inspiration.

I love the photos my students include in their lab reports, not to mention the ones that end up on Instagram and Facebook.

And what about all the other fun pics I took? Here are a few photos of my new students investigating the chemical and physical properties of iron and sulfur.

The nicest looking iron sulfide pellet of the week! 

Look at the glow of this chemical reaction.

And then the plunge into cold water to shatter the test tube. Awesome.