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lead paint in california houses

6/29/2018

Video - What Lies Upstream (2017)

6/22/2018

The book Chemistry on a Budget contains chemistry labs that are useful with inexpensive, easy to obtain materials.

During the summer vacation, buying a copy of the lab book Chemistry on a Budget can be very useful. You can examine the labs and decide what you want to use next year.

There are two versions of each lab, one with a ten-question conclusion and one with directions for a full lab report. This way the teacher has the option! Each lab is two pages to allow for one two-sided handout.

A 5-Star Customer Review of Chemistry on a Budget at amazon.com states:
“[S]traight forward, to the point, using household chemicals…this is the lab book for you.
I teach high school chemistry and this is exactly what [I] was looking for. Labs included simple household chemicals that could be easily found. Nice format, easy to follow along procedures, and touches on every topic of our chemistry curriculum.”

You can buy this lab book for $23 at amazon.com or lulu.com. It will take 1-2 weeks to get to you -- Order Now. It’s a great resource!

http://www.amazon.com/Chemistry-Budget-Marjorie-R-Heesemann/dp/0578129159/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389410170&sr=1-1&keywords=chemistry+on+a+budget

http://www.lulu.com/shop/marjorie-r-heesemann/chemistry-on-a-budget/paperback/product-21217600.html

*Some of you have already purchased my lab book – be sure to check out Page 141 !

The video What Lies Upstream (85 minutes, 2017) chronicles the issues of contaminated water in West Virginia since 2015 and investigates outcries for clean-up and subsequent changes in the response.

From pbs.org,
“In the unsetting exposé What Lies Upstream, investigative filmmaker Cullen Hoback travels to West Virginia to study the unprecedented loss of clean water for over 300,000 Americans in the 2014 Elk River chemical spill. He uncovers a shocking failure of regulation from both state and federal agencies and a damaged political system where chemical companies often write the laws that govern them.”

Another summary states:
“In the unsettling exposé What Lies Upstream, investigative filmmaker Cullen Hoback travels to West Virginia to study the unprecedented loss of clean water for over 300,000 Americans in the 2014 Elk River chemical spill. There he uncovers a shocking failure of regulation from both state and federal agencies and a damaged political system where chemical companies often write the laws that govern them. While he’s deep into his research in West Virginia, a similar water crisis strikes Flint, Michigan, revealing that the entire system that Americans assume is protecting their drinking water is fundamentally broken.

In January 2014, West Virginians noticed that their tap water had a peculiar smell. It was soon discovered that a mysterious chemical, MCHM, has leaked into the Elk River near Charleston from a damaged tank at a nearby Freedom Industries chemical plant, poisoning the drinking water supply for nine counties - nearly half of the state’s citizens. Hoback - whose interest was piqued by family ties to the state and a desire to understand why the contamination happened - embarks on an investigation that sends him down a rabbit hole of an unimaginable scale.”

I have not found a full version of this movie on the Internet that was free. Here is a preview for your information and one clip:
https://www.pbs.org/video/what-lies-upstream-trailer-d6luxb/

https://www.pbs.org/video/what-lies-upstream-contaminated-freakin-water-clip-tcs4es/

This movie could be purchased for view on line. Check your local library to see if it is available there.

This movie may be too long for classroom use (85 minutes); and, it refers to government agencies and political administrations past and present, a topic I personally preferred to avoid in my classroom. I share it with teachers to add to your knowledge of Water issues.

One idea for classroom use is to use the first 45 minutes of the movie focusing on the West Virginia water issue (before the Flint, Michigan water issues are mentioned). This video might be good for an upper-level class that may be studying ecological issues or analytical chemistry methods.

Past American Water pollution blog posts include:

05/25/2018   Students Invent Filter for Water Purification
04/06/2018   Kentucky Water Crisis
03/09/2018   12-Year Old Invents Lead Detector
02/23/2018    Chemists Develop a New Method to Break
                         Down Pollutants in Water
11/10/2017   Video -- From Flint: Voices of a Poisoned
                                     City
11/03/2017    Lead Levels in Philadephia, PA Soil
08/11/2017    Database About U.S. Public Water Systems
01/20/2017    Contaminated Drinking Water at US Marine
                        Camp
12/23/2016     Criminal Charges in Flint, Michigan
09/23/2016     Water Pollution in US Schools
12/17/2015     Current Event -- Lead Poisoning
11/13/2015     Sewage in Lake Champlain
10/08/2015     Current Event - Contaminated Drinking
                        Water
08/13/2015     Colorado Mine Accident

Also, past End of School Year blog posts include:
06/15/2014      End of Year Activity – Lab Clean-Up
06/11/2015      End of Year Reflection
06/19/2016      End of Year Reflection II

During the summer vacation, buying a copy of the lab book Chemistry on a Budget can be very useful. You can examine the labs and decide what you want to use next year.

*This Blog contains several entries that would be helpful to your chemistry classroom. Check out the Topic List to help you to find past Blog entries.

Also, Write To Me about your successes, challenges, or questions in the Chemistry Classroom.

Have a great weekend!

0 Comments

Swimming the Pacific Ocean

6/15/2018

0 Comments

The book Chemistry on a Budget contains chemistry labs that are useful with inexpensive, easy to obtain materials.

During the summer vacation, buying a copy of the lab book Chemistry on a Budget can be very useful. You can examine the labs and decide what you want to use next year.

There are two versions of each lab, one with a ten-question conclusion and one with directions for a full lab report. This way the teacher has the option! Each lab is two pages to allow for one two-sided handout.

A 5-Star Customer Review of Chemistry on a Budget at amazon.com states:
“[S]traight forward, to the point, using household chemicals…this is the lab book for you.
I teach high school chemistry and this is exactly what [I] was looking for. Labs included simple household chemicals that could be easily found. Nice format, easy to follow along procedures, and touches on every topic of our chemistry curriculum.”

You can buy this lab book for $23 at amazon.com or lulu.com. It will take 1-2 weeks to get to you -- Order Now. It’s a great resource!

http://www.amazon.com/Chemistry-Budget-Marjorie-R-Heesemann/dp/0578129159/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389410170&sr=1-1&keywords=chemistry+on+a+budget

http://www.lulu.com/shop/marjorie-r-heesemann/chemistry-on-a-budget/paperback/product-21217600.html

*Some of you have already purchased my lab book – be sure to check out Page 141 !

“It’s taken six years of planning, but on June 5 [2018] US-based French swimmer Benoit Lecomte finally set off from Japan on his world-first quest to swim across the Pacific Ocean… Ben is swimming from Tokyo to San Francisco, which is 5,500 miles. To achieve this seemingly impossible feat, he’ll swim for eight hours a day for more than six months through the White Shark Migration Area and jellyfish-infested waters, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, storms and very, very cold seas.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/duncanmadden/2018/06/05/ben-lecomte-aims-to-be-the-first-to-swim-across-the-pacific-ocean/#222b01a728fd

“Ben’s not just doing it for the adventure though – this is a science expedition as well. He’s hoping to raise as much awareness as possible for climate change, and under the direction of researchers from 12 scientific institutions including NASA and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution the crew will carry out oceanic and medical research every stroke of the way. They’ll study concentrations of plastic debris and pollution as well as the effects such extreme exercise has on the heart.”

“Lecomte and his crew will closely monitor the changing conditions, and he’ll wear a thick wet suit to help him navigate waters that could reach 50 degrees. In addition, they’ll utilize both magnetic and electric fields to ward off sharks. … The entire swim will be documented by Seeker.com, with streaming video from the boat, a multipart video series and a steady flow of social posts and dispatches, plus regular television updates on Discovery and a full-length documentary at some point next year.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2018/05/24/six-months-5700-miles-one-ocean-ben-lecomte-wants-to-be-first-to-swim-across-pacific/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2738ac2284d8

“Under the direction of researchers from 12 scientific institutions including NASA and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the crew will perform oceanic and medical research throughout the journey, marking the first time such scientific work will be conducted by the general public.”
The website http://thelongestswim.com/ may be useful as it reports daily of Ben LeComte’s progress.

“He is hoping to raise awareness for climate change, and a team of scientists will conduct research during the 5,500 mile (9,000 km) swim. They will study plastic debris, the effect of extreme exercise on the heart and examine how the Fukushima nuclear disaster has affected the ocean.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44358680

“The currents he will be using to boost his speed during the swim are part of the greater North Pacific Ocean gyre (commonly known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch) — a huge clockwise-rotating body of water, now infamous for its high concentration of plastic.

The latest research estimates there is about 78,000 tonnes of plastic in the gyre spread across an area the size of Queensland.

Alarmingly, researchers believe the amount of plastic in the gyre is 'growing exponentially' due to expanding coastal development and residence and our increasing consumption of single-use plastics.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-06-05/ben-lecomte-to-swim-great-pacific-garbage-patch/9807182

Past blog posts about Ocean Pollution include:
06/25/2015        Ocean Clean-Up
02/28/2016        Video: "Does the Ocean Think?"
03/19/2016        Microplastic Polluting Our Oceans
11/25/2016        Tsunami Near Fukushima
02/17/2017        The Ocean Clean-up Project Revisited

Past End of School Year blog posts include:
06/15/2014      End of Year Activity – Lab Clean-Up
06/11/2015      End of Year Reflection
06/19/2016      End of Year Reflection II

During the summer vacation, buying a copy of the lab book Chemistry on a Budget can be very useful. You can examine the labs and decide what you want to use next year.

http://www.amazon.com/Chemistry-Budget-Marjorie-R-Heesemann/dp/0578129159/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389410170&sr=1-1&keywords=chemistry+on+a+budget

http://www.lulu.com/shop/marjorie-r-heesemann/chemistry-on-a-budget/paperback/product-21217600.html

*This Blog contains several entries that would be helpful to your chemistry classroom. Check out the Topic List to help you to find past Blog entries.

Also, Write To Me about your successes, challenges, or questions in the Chemistry Classroom.

Have a great weekend!

0 Comments

Lone Water Molecules turn out to Influence Supramolecular Chemistry

6/8/2018

0 Comments

The book Chemistry on a Budget contains inexpensive chemistry labs that are useful with easy to obtain materials.

There are two versions of each lab, one with a ten-question conclusion and one with directions for a full lab report. This way the teacher has the option! Each lab is two pages to allow for one two-sided handout.

A 5-Star Customer Review of Chemistry on a Budget at amazon.com states:

“[S]traight forward, to the point, using household chemicals…this is the lab book for you.
I teach high school chemistry and this is exactly what [I] was looking for. Labs included simple household chemicals that could be easily found. Nice format, easy to follow along procedures, and touches on every topic of our chemistry curriculum.”

You can buy this lab book for $23 at amazon.com or lulu.com. It will take 1-2 weeks to get to you -- Order Now. It’s a great resource!

http://www.amazon.com/Chemistry-Budget-Marjorie-R-Heesemann/dp/0578129159/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389410170&sr=1-1&keywords=chemistry+on+a+budget

http://www.lulu.com/shop/marjorie-r-heesemann/chemistry-on-a-budget/paperback/product-21217600.html

*Some of you have already purchased my lab book – be sure to check out Page 141 !

“Scientists in supramolecular chemistry often run into surprising outcomes. A broken seal of a lab cuvette led an American researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology to the origin of these inexplicable results: the weather. Or the humidity, to be more precise, because this determines the water concentration in oils used as solvents, which was previously thought to be negligible. Research now shows that the lone water molecules in oil aren't just spectators, they firmly direct supramolecular processes. This outcome means that a lot of previous research has to be re-examined, but also that chemists get a new, cheap and powerful tool. “
https://phys.org/news/2018-05-lone-molecules-directors-supramolecular-chemistry.html

“In September 2016 postdoctoral researcher Nathan van Zee spent a week with his parents in Florida. But his thoughts often led him back to his lab in The Netherlands because he had been struggling for quite some time with erratic outcomes he didn't understand. The molecular helices that he was synthesizing sometimes had a clockwise structure and sometimes an anti-clockwise structure. …

After his flight back from the US he immediately went to his laboratory to start a new experiment, after which he wanted to take a nap. But his jetlag caused him to use the wrong settings for the instrument, and he overslept. His eureka moment … came the next day. Back in the lab he saw strange results. But he also saw that the seal of his lab cuvette was broken, and the ultradry air of the enclosing sample holder had gotten into it. This gave him an important clue: his sample had become drier, suggesting the water content of the solvent oil is a driving force.

Van Zee and his supervisor professor Bert Meijer immediately knew they were on to something important, and they decided to get to the bottom of it. They discovered that it was indeed the water concentration in the sample that made the difference, even though it was only a few ppm (parts per million). Even with extremely small fluctuations in water concentration, they observed that the helix rotation changes from clockwise to anti-clockwise.

This result caused the researchers to have a closer look at some of their previous work that had inexplicable results. It turned out that also in these tests the water concentration determined the outcome. The previously inexplicable changes in the results were caused by fluctuations in the water content of the oil-based solvent. Because that content fluctuates with the humidity. And the atmospheric humidity—indoors and outdoors—is constantly changing because of the weather. The consequence is that a test run on day A can have totally different results from exactly the same test run on day B.”

“Research now shows that the lone water molecules in oil aren't just spectators, they firmly direct supramolecular processes. This outcome means that a lot of previous research has to be re-examined, but also that chemists get a new, cheap and powerful tool.”https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180530144142.htm
“Water molecules are polar: one side is negatively charged and the other positively. That's why they like to bond, via so-called hydrogen bonds. But oil is hydrophobic: it repels water. This repulsion leaves too little space for the water molecules in oil to bond with other water molecules; they are isolated. That means their potential energy to form new hydrogen bonds is available for other uses. The Eindhoven researchers have shown that this energy of water plays a crucial role in the formation of supramolecular structures. These are molecular aggregates based on reversible bonds, for example hydrogen bonds.

Their findings put quite a burden on their own science field as well as adjacent ones. A lot of chemistry is done in oil, so a lot of previous research will have to be re-evaluated to assess the effect of water. The researchers suspect that many previous reports of unexplained phenomena, be it changes in structure, size or processing, are fundamentally due to interactions with water.”
http://www.chemeurope.com/en/news/1155424/lone-water-molecules-turn-out-to-be-directors-of-supramolecular-chemistry.html

Past blog posts that may be useful are:
03/12/2014          Polarity and Intermolecular Forces
03/16/2014          Dipole-dipole forces, etc.

Current scientific research can be useful as the basis of Essay or Short-Answer questions in your Final Exam.

Past “End of School Year” blog posts include:
06/08/2014            Final Exams – End of Year Preparation
06/15/2014            End of Year Activity – Lab Clean-Up
06/04/2015            Final Exams II

*This Blog contains several entries that would be helpful to your chemistry classroom. Check out the Topic List to help you to find past Blog entries.

Also, Write To Me about your successes, challenges, or questions in the Chemistry Classroom.

Remember, buying a copy of the lab book Chemistry on a Budget can be very useful to your Chemistry classroom with labs and class article ideas.

Have a great weekend!

0 Comments

film on Ocean Water interrupts CO2 absorption

6/1/2018

0 Comments

The book Chemistry on a Budget contains inexpensive chemistry labs that are useful with easy to obtain materials.

There are two versions of each lab, one with a ten-question conclusion and one with directions for a full lab report. This way the teacher has the option! Each lab is two pages to allow for one two-sided handout.

A 5-Star Customer Review of Chemistry on a Budget at amazon.com states:
“[S]traight forward, to the point, using household chemicals…this is the lab book for you.
I teach high school chemistry and this is exactly what [I] was looking for. Labs included simple household chemicals that could be easily found. Nice format, easy to follow along procedures, and touches on every topic of our chemistry curriculum.”

You can buy this lab book for $23 at amazon.com or lulu.com. It will take 1-2 weeks to get to you -- Order Now. It’s a great resource!

http://www.amazon.com/Chemistry-Budget-Marjorie-R-Heesemann/dp/0578129159/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389410170&sr=1-1&keywords=chemistry+on+a+budget

http://www.lulu.com/shop/marjorie-r-heesemann/chemistry-on-a-budget/paperback/product-21217600.html

*Some of you have already purchased my lab book – be sure to check out Page 141 !

“The oceans contain about 50 times more CO2 than the atmosphere and 19 times more than the land biosphere. CO2 moves between the atmosphere and the ocean by molecular diffusion when there is a difference between CO2 gas pressure (pCO2 ) between the atmosphere and oceans. For example, when the atmospheric pCO2 is higher than the surface ocean, CO2 diffuses across the air-sea boundary into the sea water.

The oceans are able to hold much more carbon than the atmosphere because most of the CO2 that diffuses into the oceans reacts with the water to form carbonic acid and its dissociation products, bicarbonate and carbonate ions . The conversion of CO2 gas into nongaseous forms such as carbonic acid and bicarbonate and carbonate ions effectively reduces the CO2 gas pressure in the water, thereby allowing more diffusion from the atmosphere. “
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Bi-Ca/Carbon-Dioxide-in-the-Ocean-and-Atmosphere.html

“New research has shown that an invisible film on the surface of the world’s oceans may be greatly reducing carbon absorption from the atmosphere, according to The Guardian. The study, by scientists at the universities of Heriot-Watt, Newcastle, and Exeter, will impact future climate change forecasts. …

As the planet’s greatest long-term sink of carbon dioxide, oceans absorb roughly a quarter of all carbon dioxide emissions generated from human activity. Higher levels of sea turbulence lead to a greater exchange of gases between the ocean and atmosphere.

Now, researchers have calculated the impact of ‘biological surfactants’ on this process, which has been difficult to quantify. The study, by researchers with the European Space Agency, the Natural Environment Research Council, and the Leverhulme Trust, provides real-time comparisons of this ‘surfactant effect’ in different parts of the world’s oceans. Their findings showed that surfactants can cut down on the ocean’s carbon absorption by as much as 50 percent.

Such a significant reduction could prove to be a problem – especially since warming temperatures spark a corresponding rise in surfactants.”
http://thewestsidestory.net/research-shows-particles-on-ocean-surface-can-cut-carbon-absorption-in-half/

“Carbon sinks are natural systems that suck up and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The main natural carbon sinks are plants, the ocean and soil. Plants grab carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to use in photosynthesis; some of this carbon is transferred to soil as plants die and decompose. The oceans are a major carbon storage system for carbon dioxide. Marine animals also take up the gas for photosynthesis, while some carbon dioxide simply dissolves in the seawater.

‘Combined, the Earth’s land and ocean sinks absorb about half of all carbon dioxide emissions from human activities,’ said Paul Fraser of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.”
https://www.livescience.com/32354-what-is-a-carbon-sink.html

“The world's oceans currently absorb around a quarter of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, making them the largest long-term sink of carbon on Earth.

Atmosphere-ocean gas exchange is controlled by turbulence at the sea surface, the main cause of which is waves generated by wind. Greater turbulence means increased gas exchange and, until now, it was difficult to calculate the effect of biological surfactants on this exchange.

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), Leverhulme Trust and European Space Agency funded team developed a novel experimental system that directly compares ‘the surfactant effect’ between different sea waters collected along oceanographic cruises, in real time.

Using this and satellite observations the team then found that surfactants can reduce carbon dioxide exchange by up to 50 percent.”
https://phys.org/news/2018-05-invisible-barrier-ocean-surface-carbon.html

“Scientists say the surfactants are not necessarily visible like an oil slick or foam and are difficult to identify from satellites monitoring our ocean’s surface.
They say they need to be able to identify organic matter on the surface microlayer of the ocean so they can reliably estimate gas exchange rates such as carbon dioxide and methane.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/28/invisible-scum-on-sea-cuts-co2-exchange-with-air-by-up-to-50

“Dr Ryan Pereira, a Lyell research fellow at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, said: ‘As surface temperatures rise, so too do surfactants, which is why this is such a critical finding. The warmer the ocean surface gets, the more surfactants we can expect, and an even greater reduction in gas exchange.

What we discovered at 13 sites across the Atlantic Ocean is that biological surfactants suppress the rate of gas exchange caused by the wind. These natural surfactants aren’t necessarily visible like an oil slick, or a foam, and are even difficult to identify from satellites monitoring our ocean’s surface.

We need to be able to measure and identify the organic matter on the surface microlayer of the ocean so that we can reliably estimate rates of gas exchange of climate active gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane.’ “
http://thenational.scot/news/16254605.___Invisible_barrier____reduces_vital_carbon_uptake_by_oceans/

“Evidence suggests that the past and current ocean uptake of human-derived (anthropogenic) CO2 is primarily a physical response to rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Whenever the partial pressure of a gas is increased in the atmosphere over a body of water, the gas will diffuse into that water until the partial pressures across the air-water interface are equilibrated. However, because the global carbon cycle is intimately embedded in the physical climate system there exist several feedback loops between the two systems.

For example, increasing CO2 modifies the climate which in turn impacts ocean circulation and therefore ocean CO2 uptake. Changes in marine ecosystems resulting from rising CO2 and/or changing climate can also result in changes in air-sea CO2 exchange.

These feedbacks can change the role of the oceans in taking up atmospheric CO2 making it very difficult to predict how the ocean carbon cycle will operate in the future.”
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Carbon+Uptake

Current scientific research can be useful as the basis of Essay or Short-Answer questions in your Final Exam.

Past “End of School Year” blog posts include:
06/08/2014            Final Exams – End of Year Preparation
06/15/2014            End of Year Activity – Lab Clean-Up
06/04/2015            Final Exams II

*This Blog contains several entries that would be helpful to your chemistry classroom. Check out the Topic List to help you to find past Blog entries.

Also, Write To Me about your successes, challenges, or questions in the Chemistry Classroom.

Remember, buying a copy of the lab book Chemistry on a Budget can be very useful to your Chemistry classroom with labs and class article ideas.

Have a great weekend!

0 Comments

lead paint in california houses

Video - What Lies Upstream (2017)

Swimming the Pacific Ocean

Lone Water Molecules turn out to Influence Supramolecular Chemistry

film on Ocean Water interrupts CO2 absorption

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