All Applying scientific method articles
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NewsTeaching tips for chemical kinetics
Students’ understanding is mostly assessed through numerical problems. Sometimes performance does not reflect understanding. Here’s why
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Ideas
3 key skills your post-16 chemists need for university
How to help your students make the transition to higher education more smoothly
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Resource
Fertilisers and sustainability | 16–18 years
Investigate the rate of hydrolysis of urea and assess your learners’ practical skills, includes extension green chemistry questions on sustainable fertilisers
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Resource
Microscale neutralisation and precipitation reactions
Hone your students’ observation skills by asking them to observe two microscale reactions: neutralising citric acid and creating a lead iodide precipitate
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CPD
Teaching observation skills at 11–14
Observation is a key skill for budding chemists. This is how to develop it with your younger students
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Experiment
Antibacterial properties of the halogens | 14–18 years
Use this practical to investigate how solutions of the halogens inhibit the growth of bacteria and which is most effective
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CPD
How to teach controlled variable investigations at 11–14
Get your younger students confident with different types of variables and conducting well-controlled investigations
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Resource
Controlled variable investigations: wrong report worksheet | 11–14
Use this ‘wrong report’ activity to tackle common misconceptions and elicit discussion about surrounding controlled variables
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Ideas
Practise purposeful practicals
Identify the reason you’re teaching a particular experiment to ensure students learn not just how to do it, but the concept and technique too
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Resource
The ‘broken’ practical approach
Take this approach to practical work to ensure students are learning, not just doing
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Resource
Microscale technicians in trouble! investigation
Some solutions have been mixed up – help the technicians work out which is which
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Job profile
Chief technology officer and co-founder of a robotic chemists’ company
Benjamin explains how he’s innovating industry by creating robotic chemists who can speed up new discoveries
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Ideas
Activities for developing key secondary school chemistry skills remotely
Ready-to-go ideas and resources for developing your students’ key skills while home learning, including interpreting graphs and writing about practicals
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Ideas
Back to basics with spectrophotometry
How to demonstrate the Beer–Lambert law using your smartphone as a light meter
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Job profile
Museum scientist
Lucia analyses museum objects to help the Victoria and Albert Museum curators understand, date and authenticate them.
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Ideas
Strategies to boost learning
You’ll be hooked on these approaches to improving the quality of student work
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News
New scaffolding method improves student argumentation
The key to a good argument is flowing SOLO
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Job profile
Chief technology officer
Cristina helps develop technology that could change lives by extracting disease from the body
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Job profile
Nanotoxicologist
Vicki examines how tiny nanomaterials present in everyday products such as medicine, electronics and clothing interact with our bodies to ensure they are safe to use or consume
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Job profile
Computational toxicologist
Tim works in this rapidly expanding area of toxicology using computer modeling to more efficiently assess the risk of chemicals to people to keep the public safe
