Feedback - March 2012

By 2012-03-01T00:00:00

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Discussions from the magazine, website and social media. Teaching mechanisms and equilibrium. VLEs in school and Twitter for teacher CPD.

Talk Chemistry

There have been some great discussions recently on how to make teaching mechanisms and equilibrium fun.

Leonard Winning, a teacher at Kingston Grammar School started this topic: 

I'm shortly to start teaching equilibrium to my Y10 IGCSE classes and I'd be interested to learn what demonstrations/analogies others use to try and get students to an understanding of equilibrium. 

I usually use a coin-turning activity as a way of emphasising the dynamic nature of chemical equilibria. It seems to work quite well, but it's not a perfect analogy. Other suggestions, anyone? 

Duncan Armour from Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys replied: 

I teach it with an example of an irreversible reaction then set an oscillating reaction to get the idea that not every reaction has to go to completion. 

I project an escalator on the board and have a student running on the spot in front of it. 

A healthy wodge of theory in the middle, and typically I'd finish with the cobalt equilibrium demo at the end. 

How about you? Join Talk Chemistry to add your ideas and read the whole discussion.

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