All Materials articles – Page 5
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ResourceSeparating mixtures: That’s Chemistry!
The ‘separating mixtures’ chapter from That’s Chemistry! This chapter looks at key ideas and activities that can be used to help students learn how sieving can separate particles of different sizes and other methods used for separating mixtures.
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Plastics challenge
Links to Practical Action s plastics challenge, where students develop products from recycled objects, as a possible way of tackling environmental problems caused by plastic waste.
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Outreach: thermochromic materials
Chemicals and materials which change colour are fun and useful. In this activity you will handle thermochromic materials.
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Insulation and conduction: That’s Chemistry!
The ‘Insulation and conduction’ chapter from That’s Chemistry!: This chapter looks at key ideas and activities that can be used to help students learn how materials have different properties, including whether they are conductors or insulators of heat and/or electricity.
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Grouping and classifying materials: That’s Chemistry!
The ‘grouping and classifying materials’ chapter from That’s Chemistry! This chapter looks at the key ideas and activities that can be used to teach primary students how to group and classify materials.
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Floating garden challenge
A link to Practical Action s floating garden challenge and its related resources, where students are tasked with designing and building a model structure that will enable farmers to produce crops in areas that are liable to flooding.
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Cracking Chemistry!
Work your way through these fun chemistry practicals developed by National Science & Engineering Week.
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Beat the flood challenge
Links to Practical Action s beat the flood challenge, including the teacher and student materials, beat the flood poster, competition winners and schools experiences of the challenge. Video: Beat the flood
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Hand warmers
Use these student activities and teacher guide to investigate reusable and disposable hand warmers. You will compare reusable variants made with sodium acetate vs disposable handwarmers. You can also try making your own hand warmers. These activities may work well as a project on class topics like ‘winter’ or ‘body ...
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Wood conservation - the Mary Rose
The Mary Rose is a wooden Tudor warship that sank off Portsmouth in 1545. While on the sea bed, most of her hull became covered in silt, which effectively sealed it and the artefacts it contained in anaerobic (air-free) conditions and preserved them from decay.
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News
Multi-talented polymer more versatile than sum of its parts
Material with mix-and-match functionalities could be used in smart windows
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Hairy plants aid oil-absorbing material design
Leaves of weed could even be used to mop-up slicks
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Battery material helps people keep their cool
Nanoporous clothes would be transparent to body heat
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Review
Materials chemistry
Peter Banks reviews an online CPD course from the Royal Society of Chemistry
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Molecular machines roll in for the 2016 chemistry Nobel
Ben Feringa, Jean-Pierre Sauvage and Fraser Stoddart take chemistry’s top gong for creating a series of nanoscale machines
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Shape-shifting hydrogel can heal itself
New material returns to its original shape even when cut into pieces
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On This Day – Aug 04 : Nicolas-Jacques Conté born
He developed a method for making pencil leads, by mixing powdered graphite with clay and firing the mixture in a kiln. This method is still used to make pencils today. Until this point, pencil leads were made from pure graphite sticks that could only be imported to France from Cumbria in the UK. By varying the ratio of clay and graphite powder, the hardness of the pencil lead could also be changed.
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Protein crystals stretch knowledge of exotic materials
Self-assembling protein tiles show rare property of thickening by the same amount as they are stretched by
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Smallest ever molecular thermometers made from DNA
Tiny fragments of DNA combined with fluorescent probes can be used to take temperature at the nanoscale
