Classroom Resources: Organic Chemistry


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1 – 24 of 24 Classroom Resources

  • Functional Groups, Molecular Structure , Polarity | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Activity: Introduction to Functional Groups

    In this activity, students will learn about the naming conventions for organic compounds and examine the functional groups of different molecules.

  • Molecular Structure , Polymers, Interdisciplinary, Chemical Properties | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Activity: Ingenious: Oversexed Moths Are Ruining Apples for Everyone Video Questions

    In this activity, students will answer questions while watching the video Oversexed Moths are Ruining Apples for Everyone from the Ingenious series produced by the American Chemical Society. Each episode investigates a different topic related to how leading-edge chemistry is taking on the world’s most urgent issues to advance everyone’s quality of life and secure our shared future. This episode investigates how the larvae of codling moths wreak havoc in orchards—burrowing into fruit and eating them from the inside out. Scientists are developing synthetic, species-specific pheromones as an alternative to pesticides. Pheromones are scented chemical messages that animals release at mating time and can help to prevent male codling moths from finding females to mate with. No mating means no eggs, no larvae and no more bad apples!

  • Interdisciplinary, Functional Groups, Molecular Structure | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Video: Ingenious Video 8: Is the Answer to Overfishing… Algae?

    Omega-3s are an essential nutrient that humans have to get from fish. But many of the world’s wild fish species are in crisis because we’ve taken too many of them from the ocean. So the answer is to farm more of our fish, right? While fish-farming relieves some pressure on the ocean’s wild species, it also contributes to that pressure, since farmed fish are fed fishmeal made from wild-caught fish. That’s because fish don’t make their own Omega-3s either. Like us, they get them from their diet. Using technology that came out of the space program, scientists have developed a way to cut out the middle-fish from the food chain and harvest Omega-3s for fishmeal directly from the source: algae.

  • Molecular Structure, Intermolecular Forces, Polarity, Molecular Structure , Combustion | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Video: Ingenious Video 5: Making Shipping Greener with Hairy Ships

    The “fouling” of boats — when aquatic animals like barnacles and tubeworms attach to hulls — has been a nuisance for as long as we’ve been sailing the seas. Fouling messes up a vessel’s streamlined shape, decreasing its speed, maneuverability, and in modern times, its fuel-efficiency. Fouling spikes the carbon footprint of the shipping industry, already greater than that of most countries. For centuries, people used copper coatings to prevent fouling. Modern solutions use toxic chemical paints that pollute the water, kill marine life, and contribute to the degradation of our oceans when they wear off. A new approach is trying to work with nature instead of against it. Taking inspiration from the Salvinia plant, which is covered in tiny hair-like structures that make it basically waterproof, scientists are developing a stick-on silicone coating for ships that prevents animal hitchhikers from getting a foothold.

  • Molecular Structure, Intermolecular Forces, Polarity, Polymers, Molecular Structure , Functional Groups, Polymers | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Activity: Ingenious: Kill More Germs by Cleaning … Less? Video Questions

    In this activity, students will answer questions while watching the video, Kill More Germs by Cleaning… Less?, from the Ingenious series produced by the American Chemical Society. Each episode investigates a different topic related to how leading-edge chemistry is taking on the world’s most urgent issues to advance everyone’s quality of life and secure our shared future. This episode investigates the chemistry of cleaning. Unfortunately, clean doesn’t last as long as you might think—this video examines how disinfectants work and also how long they lasts. Scientists share about the next generation of cleaning products, that keeps the germ-killing ingredients in place and effective much longer.

  • Molecular Structure, Intermolecular Forces, Polarity, Molecular Structure , Combustion | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Activity: Ingenious: Making Shipping Greener with Hairy Ships Video Questions

    In this activity, students will answer questions while watching the video, Making Shipping Greener with Hairy Ships, from the Ingenious series produced by the American Chemical Society. Each episode investigates a different topic related to how leading-edge chemistry is taking on the world’s most urgent issues to advance everyone’s quality of life and secure our shared future. This episode investigates the “fouling” of boats (when aquatic animals like barnacles and tubeworms attach to hulls), and the impact it has on fuel efficiency. Since fouling is a significant contributor to the carbon footprint, this video highlights how scientists were inspired by unique aquatic plants to develop a stick-on silicone coating for ships that prevents animal hitchhikers from getting a foothold.

  • Molecular Structure, Intermolecular Forces, Polarity, Polymers, Molecular Structure , Functional Groups, Polymers | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Video: Ingenious Video 6: Kill More Germs by Cleaning … Less?

    There’s clean, and then there’s CLEAN. Even if something looks clean, it might still be harboring microbes – many of them harmless, some of them definitely not. With most of the ways that we clean and disinfect — that is, kill germs — the clean doesn’t last as long as you might think. Disinfectants work by attacking bacterial membranes and viral protein coats, breaking them down so that those germs fall apart and die. But the germaphobes were always right: As soon as a disinfectant dries, and a surface is re-exposed, like if someone touches or (worse) sneezes on it, it needs be disinfected all over again. The next generation of cleaning products, however, add a trick: they lay down an incredibly thin polymer layer that keeps the germ-killing ingredients in place and effective for 24 hours at a time.

  • Lab Safety, Physical Properties, Chemical Properties, Interdisciplinary, Heat, Temperature, Polymers, Molecular Structure | High School

    Video: Ingenious Video 3: This Sandwich Will Save Your Life in an Arc Flash

    It’s never fun when your clothes catch on fire. And while “stop, drop, and roll” may be a good idea sometimes, in more extreme cases, you need a better plan. Every day, industrial workers, firefighters, and soldiers risk fiery situations that might seem hard to imagine. In an arc flash event, for one, temperatures can jump to metal-melting levels in milliseconds. How can anyone possibly survive that? Well, take a tip from a club sandwich, because it’s all about the layers. The composite fabrics that protect life and limb in these situations rely on some incredible, multilayered chemistry, including the ability to quickly form a protective carbonaceous crust around the wearer.

  • Polymers, Molecular Structure, Molecular Structure , Polymers, Solubility | High School

    Video: Ingenious Video 4: How Science Is Fixing Recycling's Grossest Problem

    Polypropylene recycling has a problem: It stinks. Food and other residues are almost impossible to remove entirely from polypropylene, a.k.a the number “5” plastic of grocery-store fame. Those residues – anything from yogurt to garlic, from fish oil to baby food – not only stick to polypropylene, they degrade there and start to smell even worse! Current polypropylene recycling techniques are more down-cycling than re-cycling. Unless you break down its molecules through a highly energy-intensive refining process, the material can only get a second life as a black trash can or an underground pipe – wherever its smell doesn’t matter. But a new technique, called dissolution recycling, is changing all that. Dissolution recycling uses a special hydrocarbon polymer solvent under finely controlled conditions of temperature and pressure to eliminate ALL of the contaminants embedded in the plastic.

  • Lab Safety, Physical Properties, Chemical Properties, Interdisciplinary, Heat, Temperature, Polymers, Polymers | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Activity: Ingenious: This Sandwich Will Save Your Life in an Arc Flash Video Questions

    In this activity, students will answer questions while watching the video, This Sandwich will Save your life in an Arc Flash, from the Ingenious series produced by the American Chemical Society. Each episode investigates a different topic related to how leading-edge chemistry is taking on the world’s most urgent issues to advance everyone’s quality of life and secure our shared future. This episode investigates the composite fabrics that protect lives of many people, like industrial workers, firefighters, and soldiers. When these workers encounter a fiery situation, they rely on protective clothing, designed using multiple layers of chemistry, to keep them safe.

  • Polymers, Molecular Structure, Molecular Structure , Polymers, Solubility | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Activity: Ingenious: How Science Is Fixing Recycling's Grossest Problem Video Questions

    In this activity, students will answer questions while watching the video, How Science is Fixing Recycling’s Grossest Problem, from the Ingenious series produced by the American Chemical Society. Each episode investigates a different topic related to how leading-edge chemistry is taking on the world’s most urgent issues to advance everyone’s quality of life and secure our shared future. This episode investigates the stinky problems associated with polypropylene recycling. Current polypropylene recycling techniques are more down-cycling than re-cycling, but a new technique, called dissolution recycling, is changing all that.

  • Electromagnetic Spectrum, Molecular Structure, Chemical Bond, Molecular Structure | High School

    Video: Ingenious Video 2: What Birds Know About Color that You Don't

    We’ve been using pigments and dyes for thousands of years, but they’re not the whole story when it comes to making color. “Structural” color occurs when tiny nanostructures interact with light waves, amplifying certain colors and canceling others. From brilliant bird feathers to butterfly wings, mole hairs to octopus skin, structural color is everywhere in the natural world. Researchers have tried for years to harness this incredible natural phenomenon in a useful way. Because these colors are so small and complex, and therefore hard to copy, their efforts have met with little success. But novel research using a computer model based in repeated random sampling — a so-called “Monte Carlo” model — is showing promise. Using this approach, scientists have been able to mimic the gorgeous blue of the mountain bluebird in a thin film of reflective beads, leapfrogging millennia of evolution.

  • Molecular Structure, Chemical Bond, Electromagnetic Spectrum, Molecular Structure | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Activity: Ingenious: What Birds Know About Color that You Don't Video Questions

    In this activity, students will answer questions while watching the video, What Birds Know about Color that You Don’t, from the Ingenious series produced by the American Chemical Society. Each episode investigates a different topic related to how leading-edge chemistry is taking on the world’s most urgent issues to advance everyone’s quality of life and secure our shared future. This episode investigates structural color, its complexities as well as how it differs from pigments and dyes.

  • Molecular Structure, Molecular Formula, Measurements, Significant Figures, Molecular Structure , Saturated vs. Unsaturated | Middle School, High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Project: Discovering Chemical Elements in Food

    In this project, students will analyze nutrition labels of some of the foods and drinks that they recently consumed. They will identify which type of macromolecule (carbohydrates, lipids, proteins) is mainly supplied by the item and they will compare their consumption with the daily recommended intake for that type of macromolecule. Students will also investigate salt and added sugar as well as vitamins and minerals in the item. Finally, students will present their findings through short, spoken messages that are recorded and presented through a QR code. These can become a source of information for the school community at large upon completion of the project.

  • Interdisciplinary, Functional Groups, Molecular Structure | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Activity: Ingenious: Is the Answer to Overfishing… Algae? Video Questions

    In this activity, students will answer questions while watching the video, Is the Answer to Overfishing… Algae? from the Ingenious series produced by the American Chemical Society. Each episode investigates a different topic related to how leading-edge chemistry is taking on the world’s most urgent issues to advance everyone’s quality of life and secure our shared future. This episode investigates Omega-3’s, the essential nutrient that humans have to get from fish. However, fish don’t make their own Omega-3’s, and like humans, must get them from an important part of their diet, algae. But with over-fishing considerations and fish-farming limitations, scientists are working to develop a new way to harvest Omega-3’s to maintain stability.

  • Density, Separating Mixtures, Polymers, Polymers | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Activity: Identifying Plastics with Density Data

    In this activity, students will familiarize themselves with different types of plastics. Using data analysis, students will determine how to use the density values of a variety of plastic samples in order to separate a specific sample from a mixture.

  • Review, Culminating Project, Molecular Structure | Middle School, High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Activity: Online Meeting Scavenger Hunt

    In this activity, students will work in teams on a virtual meeting platform to find as many objects as possible from a comprehensive scavenger hunt list within their homes during a given timeframe. The items on the list provided in this activity are related to organic chemistry topics, however the list can be easily modified for use with many chemistry topics.

  • Molecular Structure , Naming Compounds, Molecular Structure | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Activity: Naming Alkanes

    In this activity, students will learn how to name simple organic structures including alkanes, branched alkanes and haloalkanes.

  • Heat of Combustion, Heat, Exothermic & Endothermic, Combustion, Polymers, Molecular Structure | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Activity: The Internal Combustion Engine Video Questions

    In this activity, students will watch a video and answer related questions about the mechanical and chemical processed used in the internal combustion engine. Additionally they will learn about reactions and fuel types as well as the history and evolution of the combustion engine.

  • Molecular Structure , Molecular Structure, Molecular Formula, Naming Compounds, Chemical Bond, Interdisciplinary, Introduction | Middle School, High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Activity: Modeling Carbohydrates

    In this activity, students will identify that organic compounds contain carbon and other elements such as hydrogen and oxygen. They will investigate the structure of different organic and inorganic compounds and model several molecules, including a carbohydrate molecule. They will use their models to help understand how larger molecules are broken down into smaller molecules.

  • Pharmaceuticals, Molecular Structure | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Project: Organic Chemistry

    In this research project, students will demonstrate their knowledge of stereochemistry and present its role in well-known pharmaceutical compounds.

  • Molecular Structure, Molecular Geometry, History, Periodic Table, Molecular Structure | Elementary School, Middle School, High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Video: Phosphorous Video

    In this video, Sam Kean tells the story of how phosphorus was at the center of the race to discover the structure of DNA.

  • Polymers, Polymers, Molecular Structure, Physical Properties | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Activity: Molecular Spaghetti

    In this activity, students will discover how the entanglement in cooked spaghetti depends on the length of the spaghetti strands and relate this discovery to polymeric materials.

  • Molecular Formula, History, Functional Groups, Covalent Bonding, Molecular Structure | High School

    Access is an AACT member benefit. Activity: Napoleon's Buttons Writing Assignment

    In this activity, students read Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson’s book Napoleon’s Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History. They discuss the book in class and complete a written assignment based on the chemistry and history highlighted in the book.

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