E = m(c + a little bit)2
IB chemistry teachers who fret over how to teach students the correct use of uncertainties in their IA practical write-ups can have a field day over recent work from CERN in Switzerland. Scientists have...
Chemistry/Art/IT project
Those of you who have been to my workshops will know that I have a real interest in combining Chemistry and Art. In the past Science and Art were very much inter-related (see, for example, the painting...
Chemistry, economics and mnemonics
One element that everyone seems to know the value of is gold. Due to the ‘credit crunch’ and the continuing world economic uncertainties the price of gold has increased to nearly US$2000 per ounce. This...
Hydrogen bonding
The more I look critically at the IB Chemistry Diploma programme the more I find that is either simply wrong or at best only a simplified half-truth. This is not to criticise the IB programme as such...
Bodyscanners
I suppose we have all felt like Loukai Phillips at times as we go through airport security. Loukai was so fed up with being body searched that she decided to take matters into her own hands and stripped...
A novel use for biscuits
In an earlier blog about the winners of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics I explained how Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov discovered graphene using very simple equipment – essentially some sticky tape...
Teaching with ketamine
Avid subscribers to this website will have looked at the pages on using the IB Data Booklet creatively to give them ideas as to how they can enhance their teaching of some of the concepts contained in...
Getting hold of chemicals
Those of you who have read ‘Uncle Tungsten’ by Oliver Sachs will know that once it was easy to get hold of almost any chemical that a budding young chemist might want to experiment with. When I was about...
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'Chemistry man'
I’ve been running a Chemistry workshop in Astana for this past week. The aim was to give examples of good practice to teach ‘the IB way’ rather than cover the IB in specific detail. The teachers came...
Falling life expectancy
Chemistry often gets a bad press. Some obvious examples are environmental pollution such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the use of toxic defoliants such as Agent Orange or the siting of nuclear power...