Creating the Chemistry Course of My Dreams

Popping popcorn for the first lab.

Everyone knows that a good experiment only has one variable that changes at a time.  How can you possibly know how a change has affected the system if you make more than one variation?  Well... this year, my Honors Chemistry curriculum is definitely not a controlled experiment because I have made three big changes to my teaching this year. 

Using Bunsen burners the first week of class!

The first big change was the decision not to use a text book.  Don, my co-teacher for the Honors course, and I came to the realization that our text book choices over the past several years were not meeting our needs.  And, more importantly, the book felt like a ball and chain dragging us down paths that we didn't want to go.  I felt a certain obligation to make the book part of the class because I asked my students to shell out their own money to buy it (and science text books are not cheap).  Even with our last choice of an on-line/electronic book, I felt frustrated by the resource rather than supported by it.  So we took the leap of faith and decided to scrap the book all together.  So far I haven't missed it at all.  I have plenty of on-line resources that I use along with my own stuff that I give the kids electronically.

Lab is the heart of my new course.

The absence of the book opened the door for us to create the "Chemistry Course of My Dreams".  Don and I spent time over the summer crafting a chemistry course that would fit the needs of our Honors students, draw on the things we liked from previous years, and incorporate some new ideas that we have wanted to try but couldn't figure out how to fit in with the book.  The back-bone of our course, and the starting point for our design, is the lab program.  We decided to create a progression of labs that would lead the students towards an understanding of the composition of matter.  The content needed to support the labs would fill in the "meat" on the bones of our course. 

They are so happy to have un-burnt popcorn!

The next big leap of faith was the decision to use the flipped classroom model to teach the class.  When I found the flipped classroom idea, it all fell into place for me.  It was a natural progression for me because we can use the video resources to teach the content that the students will apply in the lab work.  I feel that the flipped classroom is a perfect blend of lab experiences and content that is delivered when it is needed. 

So here I am, three weeks into the new school year.  I am very happy with the changes we have made to the Honors Chemistry Curriculum.  I'm so relieved not to have the pressure of covering chapters in the book.  That first decision we made to get rid of the book has opened up a whole new set of possibilities for my students.

Chemistry teacher selfy.  Way cool for me, not so much for Jack!

A Weekend on the Deerfield River

Enjoying a day on the Deerfield River with my students.

One of the great things about my job is that I get to go on really fun trips with school groups.  This weekend I went with the Outdoor Adventure Team to the Deerfield River in western Mass for a great weekend camping and canoeing trip.  All I had to do was drive the bus, and in return I got to spend two days on the river doing eddy turns and running some rapids.  Thanks to Bill for leading a great trip!

We pulled out of Pomfret on Friday at 10:30.  We arrived at our campsite on the river around 1:00.  The dam release didn't start until 2:00 that day, so we took some time to set up our camp, spot the vehicles, and do some safety training.  We got on the river by 3:00 and enjoyed the last day of summer in the bright sunshine.  That night after dinner we journeyed into Shelbourne Falls to play candle pin bowling.  It was so nice to see the boys smiling and laughing as we tossed the balls down the lanes.

Saturday we enjoyed a hot breakfast in camp and some leisurely rounds of frisbee; no rush because the dam release didn't start until noon.  We got on the river by 12:30 amongst a healthy crowd of kayakers, tubers, and canoers.  It was a great day to enjoy the river and some good company along the Deerfield.  When he paddled into camp around 4:30, we all jumped into the river for a swim (JRI) and some jumps into the river from the rocks along the far bank.  For dinner that night, Rob taught us how to make camp pizza, a recipe he took back from his NOLS experience over the summer.  It was SO GOOD to eat hot pizza in camp.

Sunday morning David and I used the extra dough from the pizza to make hot apple turnovers!  Now that's what I call breakfast.  We ended the trip with a hike along the Dunbar Brook Trail to a nice swimming hole.  No swimming today with our two hour bus tip looming, but very nice scenery and an invigorating hike non the less.  We said our goodbyes to the Deerfield River as we drove back down the familiar access road to the paddling launch sites for the last time.  We pulled into Pomfret at about 4:00 with lots pictures and a fresh perspective on the week ahead of us.

First Week of Flipping

I'm a week into the "Flipped Classroom" experiment.  I love it!  The change is challenging and also very right for my class. 

First Week of Flipping

The basic idea of the flip is to reverse the traditional in-class activities and homework activities.  So the typical in-class learning, such as listening to a lecture and taking class notes, is done at home in an individual learning space.  While the typical homework activities, like homework problems and application-type exercises, are done in class as group learning events.  In science class, the flip concept is very natural because we already do so many group learning activities in the lab.  Instead of assigning work from the book for homework, my students are using homework time to watch instructional videos and take notes.  In class, we are doing group activities, white board practice, and labs to apply the information.  (Okay, it's only been one week, so we didn't do all of that yet, but we'll get there.)

I decided to flip my classroom pretty early in the summer.  I spent some time over the summer reading about what other teachers are doing, researching the impact of the technique on student learning, and having anxiety dreams  about teaching (yes, they started in June this year).  I recommend the book Flip Your Classroom by Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams if you're thinking of trying the flip. 

Students working on a group activity

At the heart of the flip classroom is the notion that the teacher is not focal point of class.  Students must engage in active learning to fully learn the concepts.  In order for this to work for me, I had to get myself away from the front of the classroom.  To make this happen, I rearranged my classroom so that the desks weren't facing the front of the room.  I knew that if the students were facing the front, then I would end up there on day one.  What a difference the desk arrangement can make for class dynamics.  This week, I found that I was walking around the room more and that the students were using the whole room, not just the desks in the front.  I have let go of my control freak nature of assigning seats because the kids are switching groups and moving around the room throughout the class.

As for the videos, they're getting better.  I've done five so far.  I'm collaborating with two other teachers on the flip.  We all enjoy making the videos together (thanks for the tip, Jon and Sam) and they are much more interesting to watch when we do them together. 


I'm hooked on the Flip.  There's no looking back for me.  I have opened up my teaching to a whole new set of possibilities.  I'm excited to see where this change will take us!

I'm Back in the Lab Coat Again!

The Fun Milk Experiment

I really didn't mean to take the whole summer off from  my chemistry blog.  As I do every year, I leave school in the spring with the best of intentions.  I make big plans to reorganize the lab, clean up the prep room, and this year write in the blog about new demos I'll try in the summer.  Well...

Enough apologizing, I'm back!

The kids are all smiles on Day One.

It feels so good to be back in the classroom with my students.  We started off the year with a fun, new-to-me experiment with milk, food coloring and soap.  I like to get the kids doing interesting lab work right away on the first day.  It's challenging to find something that is interesting, easy, not too laden with advanced content, and manageable in one day.  We found just the thing with this milk experiment.

I started a class blog for each of my chemistry levels this year, I call it GeyerChem.  Their first assignment is to make a post on the blog about what they learned today.  You can check it out here Honors GeyerChem Blog or here GeyerChem Blog.  The blogging addiction grows.

Swirling Round Bottoms: Viscoscity and IMFs

We swirled these liquids to see the effect of intermolecular forces on viscosity.

 This is a new demo that I worked up this year to help demonstrate the impact of intermolecular forces (IMFs) on the properties of liquids.  I found it in "A Demo a Day, Volume 2"; a great resource for quick and easy chemistry demos.  These beautiful liquids represent a range of IMFs, from the weakest (London dispersion forces) to the strongest (hydrogen bonding).  The purple liquid is hexane, with a little iodine for the beautiful color.  The orange liquid is ethanol, which has on O-H group that provides hydrogen bonding.  The blue liquid is water, a molecule that is famous for its efficient hydrogen bonding.  The bright green liquid is antifreeze, which contains mostly ethylene glycol, an organic compound with the same structure as ethanol but with an O-H group on each end.  The yellow liquid is glycerin, also an organic compound but with three O-H groups.

Glycerin vs. Hexane

 Swirling each flask is an easy way to see the difference in the viscosity of the liquids.  The stronger the IMFs, the less these liquids will swirl.  The hexane will swirl very easily and for a long time.  The swirling becomes increasingly sluggish as you progress to ethanol, water, ethylene glycol, and then glycerine.  Actually, the glycerine doesn't swirl at all.  It barely moves in the flask, much like cold honey.  I passed around the flasks to the class to get them to interact with the concept of IMFs.  It's hard to get the kids to understand the difference between the three IMFs and to appreciate how they affect the properties of a substance.  This easy demo sparked some good conversations about this difficult topic.

Everyone swirl!

Just kidding, they didn't drink their samples.

I just can't get enough of these cute little round bottom flasks.

The Front Row Girls: Why I Love My Job

So proud of their octahedron.

 Here are the girls in the front row of one of my classes.  Who knew that molecular geometry molecules would be so entertaining?  Well, actually I thought it would be pretty fun, but my kids always tell me that I say that every lab is going to be fun.  So here they are, making their marshmallow molecules and recording their results for their lab report.

This one looks more like a stick figure than a molecule.

Moments like this make my job extremely fun!

"We love Chemistry!"

Looks square planar, could be XeF4

Something Unexpected from Heptane

Setting up the burets.

Today I pulled out one of my "go to" demos to introduce the concept of polar and non-polar molecules.  Polar molecules, like water, will be attracted to an electric charge while non-polar molecules, I used heptane today, is not affected by a charged object.  Or so I thought!

I prepared two burets for the demo, one with water (with a little blue food coloring to make it easy to see) and the other with heptane.  I borrowed a plastic stick and piece of rabbit fur from the physics closet to generate a negatively charged object. 

When I passed the negatively charged stick by the stream of water, it bent toward the stick.  The challenge was to get the water to bend enough to hit another beaker.

Notice the cat fur and plastic stick, and the water stream bending.

A student hits the second beaker!

Heptane does not respond to the charged stick.

Here the heptane stream is not bending, just as I expected.

The stream of heptane was not as responsive to the negatively charged stick, at first.  But when I tried it another time, the stream of heptane bent toward the charged stick.  This observation was completely unexpected.  I actually exclaimed, "That's not supposed to happen!"  I tried it again, and again the heptane stream was attracted to the stick.  What we found is that if I passed the stick near the tip of the buret, the heptane stream would bend.  But, if I approached the stream farther down, away from the opening of the buret, there was no response to the stick.

What?!  This is not supposed to happen!  The heptane bent toward the stick.

Another look at the heptane doing what it's not supposed to.

 I have a few ideas about why this happened, but it requires further experimentation to develop a working hypothesis.  I tried a second batch of fresh heptane, same result.  So I took the heptane and tried to dissolve some food coloring into it.  In this case, the heptane behaved as any non-polar substance; the food coloring did not dissolve.  I'm wondering if anyone has seen this in their lab?  I'm going to rework this demo again this week to see if I can figure it out.

Here's some food coloring in the heptane, it doesn't dissolve

 Chemists often use the saying "Like dissolves like."  In the last part of the polar/non-polar demo I showed my students how this plays out.  I poured about 40 mL of water and 5 mL of heptane into a eudiometer tube.  Then I put a small pellet of iodine, a non-polar solid, in the tube.  As I slowly inverted the tube several times, the heptane layer took on a beautiful pink color from the dissolved iodine, but the water layer stayed clear.  The non-polar iodine only dissolved in the non-polar solvent.

The iodine only dissolves in the heptane, turning it pink.

 To make it even more interesting, I dropped some food coloring into the tube.  Food coloring is a water-based solution, so it should not dissolve in the non-polar heptane layer.  Saying that to the kids is one thing, but seeing it is really believing in this case.  The food coloring stayed in a tight drop and left no trace of interaction with the heptane, and then it began to spread out into the water layer.  It was very cool to watch.

Watching the heptane "bubble" float back to the top.

The final look at the polar and non-polar solvents.

Understanding the impact of polarity on the properties of a substance is one thing, but getting my students to identify which molecules are polar and which molecules are non-polar based on the structure is not as easy.