Chemistry in your shopping basket

The Royal Society of Chemistry has a rich supply of examples of engaging outreach activities on their website that any budding science demonstrators can use. These Chemistry for our future resources are predominantly aimed at students already studying A-level chemistry to encourage them to continue further with their chemistry studies.

As experienced chemistry teachers, we could see that burgeoning chemists needed to be targeted earlier than that. We need to capture children’s imaginations at a much younger age if we are to encourage larger numbers to consider chemistry when making KS4/GCSE option choices. We decided to pool our resources and focus our outreach efforts on inspiring children aged 9–14 to take an interest in chemistry.

Chemistry in your shopping basket was the result: a very portable outreach activity that only requires the venue to provide a data projector to connect to our laptop, a couple of trestle tables and a large sink to wash up between multiple presentations. Since its premiere in March 2009, Chemistry in your shopping basket has been delivered to over 17,000 students: 14,000 in schools and 3000 at science fairs.

Peter Hoare and Anne Willis discuss and review this activity, with student feedback.