A lab safety website from NC Community Colleges, featuring a short film, music video, video game, and lesson plans.

Whether you're a chemist, researcher, or a student in a freshman biology course, the laboratory is a potentially fatal workplace. Lab safety is more than just memorizing a list of "Dos and Don'ts"...working safely is a state of mind. Our challenge was to design a blended learning program to serve as a catalyst to get learners thinking about and discussing the topic of lab safety. The ultimate goal is developing "a safety state of mind" which is demonstrated by behavioral change.

With Zombie College, lab safety training comes to life!

In Our Time is a wonderful series on BBC Radio 4.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Alchemy, the ancient science of transformations. The most famous alchemical text is the Emerald Tablet, written around 500BC and attributed to the mythical Egyptian figure of Hermes Trismegistus. Among its twelve lines are the essential words — “as above, so below”. They capture the essence of alchemy, that the heavens mirror the earth and that all things correspond to one another. Alchemy was taken up by some of the most extraordinary people in our intellectual development, including Roger Bacon, Paracelsus, the father of chemistry, Robert Boyle, and, most famously, Isaac Newton, who wrote more about alchemy than he did about physics. It is now contended that it was Newton’s studies into alchemy which gave him the fundamental insight into the famous three laws of motion and gravity.

In Our Time is a wonderful series on BBC Radio 4.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the chemical elements. The aim and challenge in chemistry, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, is the understanding of the complex materials which constitute everything in existence since the Big Bang, when the whole universe emerged out of the two elements of hydrogen and helium.

Today we have the key to understanding these elements, the Periodic Table, which is a pattern embedded in nature and was miraculously discovered in a dream.

In Our Time is a wonderful series on BBC Radio 4.

Melvyn Bragg discusses the discovery of Oxygen by Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier.

For the British dissenting preacher, Joseph Priestley, and the French aristocrat, Antoine Lavoisier, Chemistry was full of possibilities and they pursued them for scientific and political ends. But they came to blows over oxygen because they both claimed to have discovered it, provoking a scientific controversy that rattled through the laboratories of France and England until well after their deaths. To understand their disagreement is to understand something about the nature of scientific discovery itself.

In Our Time is a wonderful series on BBC Radio 4.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and a founder member of the Royal Society. Born in Ireland in 1627, Boyle was one of the first natural philosophers to conduct rigorous experiments, laid the foundations of modern chemistry and derived Boyle's Law, describing the physical properties of gases. In addition to his experimental work he left a substantial body of writings about philosophy and religion; his piety was one of the most important factors in his intellectual activities, prompting a celebrated dispute with his contemporary Thomas Hobbes.

A six-page look at elements and molecules, written by Dr. David Morgan-Mar and provided by him under a Creative Commons license.

We’ve talked about elements and what they are made of, namely atoms. The ancient Greeks thought there were just four elements, and that everything else was made of combinations of those. The basic idea was right, they just got the actual elements wrong. We know now that neither air, fire, earth, nor water are elements. The question then comes to mind: What are they?

I'm field-testing a set of questions and directed reading exercises for this resource, and I'll include them with the download when they are ready (and announce the update). In the meantime, enjoy an interesting and well-written introduction to chemistry.

A six-page history of the periodic table, written by Dr. David Morgan-Mar and provided by him under a Creative Commons license.

Stuff is made of atoms, tiny particles that are too small to see. We can infer the existence of atoms from the chemical properties of matter, in particular how elements combine to form other substances. For many common compounds, the elements combine in specific fixed ratios, which can be understood as the combination of specific numbers of atoms of each element into molecules.

I'm field-testing a set of questions and directed reading exercises for this resource, and I'll include them with the download when they are ready (and announce the update). In the meantime, enjoy an interesting and well-written introduction to the periodic table.

A six-page tour of carbon and organic chemistry, written by Dr. David Morgan-Mar and provided by him under a Creative Commons license.

Take six protons, six neutrons, and six electrons and assemble them into an atom. You have produced an atom of carbon, one of the most common elements in the universe, and exceedingly easy to find on the surface of the Earth. Carbon is an extraordinary element, underlying much of our existence.

I'm field-testing a set of questions and directed reading exercises for this resource, and I'll include them with the download when they are ready (and announce the update). In the meantime, enjoy an interesting and well-written introduction to organic chemistry.

IoniCompounds is a fun way for students to practice forming ionic compounds. The unique ion cards make it easy to visually balance ionic compounds, while the special cards keep play exciting until the last turn.

This file contains rulebook, cards, and a folding storage box — everything needed to play IoniCompounds. The rulebook should be printed double-sided, folded, and stapled to make a small booklet. The cards can be printed on pre-punched business card stock, or printed on card stock and cut out. Alternate card backs make multiple classroom sets easy to sort out if your students get them mixed up.

ION: A Compound Building Game is a simple card drafting game where players select from a number of available ion cards and noble gas cards, with the objective of forming either neutrally charged compounds or sets of stable noble gases.

How to Play
Each player is initially dealt eight cards. They choose one card and pass the remaining to the player on their left, while they receive the same amount of cards from the player on their right (this is commonly referred to as “card drafting” or “pick and pass”).

Selected cards must be either (1) bonded to another ion or (2) set alone. Players only score points for neutrally balanced cards. So a positive charged Sodium (Na+) bonding with a negatively charge Chloride (Cl-), forming a neutral NaCl compound. would score points.

Points are scored at the end of each round and player may gain additional points for building specific compounds listed on the goal cards for that round. After three rounds the player with the most points wins!

The game comes with multiple expansions including a Transition Metals expansion, a Polyatomic Ion expansion, and a Radioactive Card expansion.

This game take a different approach to my own Ionicompounds game.

From cute little Hydrogen to heroic Meitnerium to mysterious Ununoctium, chemical element cartoon characters are bonding together, mixing-it-up and raiding each other’s Labs to capture Protons in this exciting card game.

With the Rare Earth Chemical Element Card Game, every child has fun learning the fundamentals of Chemistry, Great for Science classrooms and entertaining for kids and families, players win by combining chemical element cards.

This game is built around forming binary ionic compounds. Bonding a new compound gets you an energy card, which lets you mix an alloy. Forming a compound or allow also lets you steal a compound or allow from one of your opponents.

An expansion pack is available that adds cards to make a complete periodic table.

The rules include several variants, making it suitable for different grades. For the basic game you don't need to know any chemistry — it’s built into the rules. I would start with the simplest version (intended for children) and add complexity if the class likes the game.

Rare Earth is designed for 2-6 players, so the average classroom would need 5-6 sets. Fortunately, there’s a classroom price: six sets plus an expansion pack for the price of five, with free shipping.

LeapCloud is a Canadian company, which makes shipping a lot more reasonable than it is for many products (and free if you order two products at once).

In Our Time is a wonderful series on BBC Radio 4.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Carbon. It forms the basis of all organic life and has the amazing ability to bond with itself and a wide range of other elements, forming nearly 10 million known compounds. It is in the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the shampoo we use and the petrol that fuels our cars. Because carbon has the largest range of subtle bonding capabilities, 95% of everything that exists in the universe is made up of carbon atoms that are stuck together.

In Our Time is a wonderful series on BBC Radio 4.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the simplest and most remarkable of all molecules: water. Water is among the most abundant substances on Earth, covering more than two-thirds of the planet. Consisting of just three atoms, the water molecule is superficially simple in its structure but extraordinary in its properties. It is a rare example of a substance that can be found on Earth in gaseous, liquid and solid forms, and thanks to its unique chemical behaviour is the basis of all known life. Scientists are still discovering new things about it, such as the fact that there are at least fifteen different forms of ice.

Students often have a hard time balancing equations. They get lost in the numbers — subscripts, superscripts, how many atoms of each element? — and lose track of what they're trying to do.

This activity uses pictures of molecules to balance equations. it includes teacher’s notes, a student worksheet, ten pages of molecular model cards, template equations (for applied classes), and labels for bags to store the cards in. With most classes it can be completed in a shortened period.

A simple activity based on the corrosion of iron. These are the student worksheets — I’ll add teachers’ notes when I have time to write them up.

In essence, show students the raw materials for a case of corrosion and get them to predict what will happen, and explain their prediction. Then show them the (previously prepared) corroded object and get them to write observations, explain their observations, and then apply what they have learned to daily life.

Two versions are included: one with a marking rubric, one with just a space for teacher comments.

A six-page explanation of the pH scale, written by Dr. David Morgan-Mar and provided by him under a Creative Commons license.

It wasn’t until I got to university that I started to appreciate chemistry again. The reason, I think, is because that up until then chemistry seems to be more or less arbitrary rules that you just have to know. To understand why those rules exist, you have to dig deeper than high school science allows. You need to appreciate some of the intricacies of quantum mechanics, which dictates things like the numbers of electrons in the shells of atoms.


I'm field-testing a set of questions and directed reading exercises for this resource, and I'll include them with the download when they are ready (and announce the update). In the meantime, enjoy an interesting and well-written introduction to acids and bases.