Chemical Education Today

A good place to begin this month is by reading "The Work's Not Over - Roll Up Your Sleeves and Make a Difference" by Mickey Sarquis, founding editor of the Secondary School Section. Her superb vision in recognizing what was possible, and her leadership in making it happen, has provided a high school chemistry focus in the Journal for seventeen years. She reminds us that there are continuing challenges to be met. We want this section of the journal to help meet those challenges. Thank you, Mickey, and best wishes as you continue your endeavors to improve chemical education for the benefit of those learning at all age levels.

Also in the section, Shakhashiri has written a fitting tribute to Hubert N. Alyea (1903-1996), the master lecture demonstrator and communicator whom three generations of students and teachers remember with respect and affection.

The questions "Who Will Prepare Tomorrow's Science Teachers? How?" are addressed by Bell in his report of a AAAS forum on teacher preparation. Cannon and Heinhorst provide summaries of important discoveries and interesting articles in "Recent Reports from Nature", including information about the 1996 Nobel laureates in medicine, chemistry, and physics and the description of an artificial nose. In "A View of the Science Education Research Literature", Robinson reports on a study of the effects of computer animation on the particulate mental models of college chemistry students. The findings should be interesting to high school teachers with regard to helping students increase their level of conceptual understanding at the molecular level. The reader's attention is called also to the editorial, the announcements, and the other items appearing in this section. Each month it contains a wealth of information.

Symposium

If you are interested in keeping up with new developments in analytical separations technology, there are two articles based on papers presented at a symposium on high-performance liquid chromatography.

Chemistry Everyday for Everyone

Four articles written specifically for the high school chemistry section are included in this issue. "The Photochemistry of Sunscreens" is explained by Kimbrough. The desire for articles that apply chemical concepts to familiar, consumer items has been expressed by many teachers and this is an article that meets that need. Understanding how the eye receives light has been the impetus for a host of technological innovations described in "Photoionic Supermolecules: Mobilizing the Charge and Light Brigades" by de Silva, Gunnlaugsson, and McCoy. The article provides several examples of applications in biology and medicine.

George describes "Chemistry for Children: A Program in Precollege Chemistry for Elementary and Middle School Teachers" in which chemistry content was presented in such a way as to enable teachers to do safe, hands-on, exciting activities with their students even though they had little formal background in chemistry. From France, there is a contribution by Carriere and Abouaf, "Passion-Research: A Joint Venture to Interest High School Students in Chemistry."

In the Classroom

Two articles by Coppola, Ege, and Lawton describe innovations in "The University of Michigan Undergraduate Chemistry Curriculum, 1. Philosophy, Curriculum, and the Nature of Change and 2. Instructional Strategies and Assessment". Readers will want to consider whether there are implications for the preparation of college-bound students.

In the Laboratory

This section includes two articles of interest to any who incorporate polymer topics into the curriculum: "The Synthesis of a Superabsorbent Polymer" by Garner, Nething, and Nguyen and "The Gelation of Poly(vinyl alcohol) with Na₂B₄O₇ ·10H₂O: Killing Slime" by McLaughlin, Wyffels, Jentz, Keenan. Both articles are directed toward college courses and considerable attention needs to be given to safety issues if either is adapted for high school use. Although it requires instrumentation that may not be available in high school, "The Spectrophotometric Analysis and Modeling of Sunscreens" by Walters, Keeney, Wigal, Johnston, and Cornelius, is a good complement to Kimbrough's article, cited above.

Information Textbooks Media Resources

In "Electron Affinities and the Alkaline Earth Metals and the Sign Convention for Electron Affinity", Wheeler explains the current understanding of this topic and provides accepted electron affinity values that supersede those found in most beginning chemistry textbooks.

Making This Column More Useful

This column is intended to help you, the high school teacher, identify articles that you may find most useful. Your comments about the scope of this column are needed. Is it too narrowly focused? Is it too broad in its coverage? Are there specific articles, or groupings of articles, that would have been of more interest? Also, inquiries about manuscripts you are considering writing and offers to review manuscripts for the high school section are welcome anytime. You can reach me by any of the paths listed below:

Email: j.e.howell@ usm.edu

Phone: 601-266-6472

FAX: 601-266-6075

Mail: J. Emory Howell

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

University of Southern Mississippi

Hattiesburg, MS 39406-5043