This activity provides a simple experiment that introduces students to an important reaction of organic chemistry. It also helps students connect chemistry to something that they see and use every day and provides an opportunity for cross-curricular work. It might be connected to history or literature classes that discuss the lives of pioneers and homesteaders who often made their own household products, including soap, and it connects to industrial chemistry.
Supplement
The activity sheet can be viewed as a pdf file using Acrobat Reader.
Our Secondary School editors work hard to distill all the JCE materials to produce a fraction of particular interest to high school teachers. We call it CLIC.
In recent years we have worked hard to better match our advertisers with our readers. When shopping for chemistry education materials, visit our advertisers' WWW sites first.
Take JCE along on your outreach missions. Copies of the Journal, guest access to JCE Online, our publications catalog, and more are available for your participants.