Biographical Snapshots of Famous Women and Minority Chemists

This feature, found at Only@JCE Online now contains biographical snapshots of 54 famous chemists. The six new additions are Helen M. Dyer, Mary Fieser, William M. Jackson, May Sybil Leslie Burr, Sarah Ratner, and Hideki Shirakawa. Each snapshot contains a short biography and includes references and Web sites where more information about each chemist can be found. This feature provides a great starting point for investigating the life experiences of chemists, thereby giving students a more realistic view of chemistry. Weaving biographical information into conceptual lectures is an effective pedagogical tool that enhances students’ understanding. Without these stories, our students miss the wonderful, exciting, and human side of the chemical sciences.

Conceptual Questions and Challenge Problems

This feature provides a library of free response and multiple-choice conceptual questions and challenge problems, tips for writing these questions and problems, and a discussion of types of concept questions.

Conceptual questions tap into a student’s understanding of chemical ideas associated with the question; they can be used to challenge students to articulate their understanding and, in the process, evaluate that understanding. Many conceptual questions involve all three forms of representation used to represent and translate chemical information—macroscopic, particulate, and symbolic.

Challenge problems are multi-step (some are multi-concept) problems that are designed to be worked in groups in order to encourage student interaction and group learning and thereby involve students actively in learning chemistry.

Questions and problems have been added to the library this month, and we would welcome the submission of others. To include your materials in the library, please contact the editors (contact information can be found at the CQ and ChP Web site).