Inspiring story from a chemistry classroom – Beragampengetahuan

From former chemistry teacher HildaRuth Beaumont:

I was reminded of my days as a newly qualified teacher at a Leicestershire comprehensive school in the 1970s, when I was given a group of reluctant pupils with the instruction to ‘keep them occupied’. After a couple of false starts we agreed that they might enjoy making simple glass ornaments. I knew a little about glass blowing so I was able to teach them how to combine coloured and transparent glass to make animal figures and Christmas tree decorations. Then one of them made a small bottle complete with stopper. Her classmate said she should buy some perfume, pour some of it into the bottle and give it to her mum as a Mother’s Day gift. ‘We could actually make the perfume too,’ I said. With some dried lavender, rose petals, and orange and lemon peel, we applied solvent extraction and steam distillation to good effect and everyone was able to produce small bottles of perfume for their mothers.

What a wonderful story. We didn’t do anything like this in our high school chemistry classes! Chemistry 1 was taught by an idiot who couldn’t understand the book he was teaching out of. Chemistry 2 was taught with a single-minded goal of teaching us how to solve the problems on the Advanced Placement exam. We did well on the exam and learned essentially zero chemistry. On the plus side, this allowed me to place out of the chemistry requirement in college. On the minus side . . . maybe it would’ve been good for me to learn some chemistry in college. I don’t remember doing any labs in Chemistry 2 at all!