From: "Stuart, Ralph" <Ralph.Stuart**At_Symbol_Here**KEENE.EDU>
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] ACS and other resources on rainbow experiment and other demonstrations
Date: Fri, 19 May 2017 12:34:56 +0000
Reply-To: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU>
Message-ID: 4439041F-9AFC-4471-B439-8E1CE7454205**At_Symbol_Here**keene.edu
In-Reply-To


>why do science educators think that they must do demos with flame, explosions, or the like?? I hear the excuses "We have to get the students excited about science!"

I agree that that is a core question and this excuse ignores the likelihood that as many students are turned off of science by the flame, explosions, odors, etc. as get excited about science by them. And this is not a "chemophobia" issue - I've had many situations where chemists and other lab scientists are raising health and safety concerns to me related to emissions from neighboring labs. In my opinion, chemophobia in the general public is driven by these "educational" events at least as much as by the scientific confusion that is often cited by chemistry advocates...

>To echo Monique, "What do we do?"

I notice that J Chem Ed today published an article entitled "Development, Implementation, and Assessment of General Chemistry Lab Experiments Performed in the Virtual World of Second Life" about the use of virtual labs in the Gen Chem setting. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00733

It will be interesting to read it with this conversation in mind.

Thanks to everyone for sharing their thoughts on this.

- Ralph

Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
Environmental Safety Manager
Keene State College
603 358-2859

ralph.stuart**At_Symbol_Here**keene.edu

---
For more information about the DCHAS-L e-mail list, contact the Divisional secretary at secretary**At_Symbol_Here**dchas.org
Follow us on Twitter **At_Symbol_Here**acsdchas

Previous post   |  Top of Page   |   Next post



The content of this page reflects the personal opinion(s) of the author(s) only, not the American Chemical Society, ILPI, Safety Emporium, or any other party. Use of any information on this page is at the reader's own risk. Unauthorized reproduction of these materials is prohibited. Send questions/comments about the archive to secretary@dchas.org.
The maintenance and hosting of the DCHAS-L archive is provided through the generous support of Safety Emporium.