All Designing experiments articles
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Ideas3 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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Job profile
Process chemist – higher apprentice, pharmaceuticals
Erin helps turn new medicines into finished products so that they can be mass-produced for patients.
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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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Ideas
The fast guide to enquiry-based learning
Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about EBL and how to incorporate it into your chemistry lessons
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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
Research & development team leader - smart food labels
Giorgia leads a team at a small company that is helping to fight food waste by developing smart labels technology
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Resource
Separation techniques
A video aimed at learners, instructions, and explanation to separate a mixture of water and solids at home or in the classroom with items from a kitchen.
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Resource
Enzymes and jellies
If you add certain fresh fruit such as pineapple to jelly, it will not set. The task in this resource is to investigate why.
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Resource
Use of salt in cooking, part 1
In this activity students devise and carry out experiments to test possible reasons for adding salt when cooking vegetables.
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Resource
Sherbet and popping candy: edible experiments
What makes sherbet fizz and what makes popping candy pop? Discover the importance of chemistry in everyday eating experiences with this edible experiment.
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Resource
White powder mix-up at the factory
In Search of Solutions: As chemical engineers, you are contracted to determine how to identify several different white powders… Linking to topics on chemical reactions and physical/chemical changes.
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Resource
Water for survival
Practical problem solving investigation including filtration, distillation and temperature. Learners purify water from a muddy pond to survive.
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Resource
Separating sand, sawdust and salt
In Search of Solutions: sand, sawdust and salt, all mixed up, can your students recover them? Linking to topics on dissolving, evaporating, filtration and density.
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Resource
Desert survival
In Search of Solutions: challenge students to extract drinking water from damp sand, a real desert survival scenario! Linking to topics on evaporation and condensation.
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Resource
Wind power challenge
A link to Practical Action’s wind power challenge and its related resources, where students are tasked with designing and testing a wind power machine that is cable of lifting weighted objects,
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Resource
The squashed tomato challenge
Students design, build and test a method of transporting tomatoes
