AACT Resources to Help Teach Chemical Measurements

As chemistry teachers around the country plan activities for their students, AACT will be highlighting resources from our high school resource library that can be used to reinforce topics in different units throughout the school year. Our last post highlighted resources that could be used to support a Chemistry Basics unit. We will now focus on articles, videos, simulations, and activities that could be used in a Chemical Measurements unit.

Since our original post in the fall of 2017, we have added a few more resources that you might consider trying with your students. Additionally, we have put together a unit plan that uses many of our resources to help you teach a unit on chemical measurements.

One of our newest simulations, Measuring Volume shows students an image of a graduated cylinder and asks them to report an accurate volume measurement with the correct number of significant figures. They then are asked to determine the uncertainty value of the graduated cylinder. The simulation includes several different sizes of graduated cylinders, each containing unique markings, so students will be challenged to analyze each individually.

Your students will be challenged to design a method to solve three chemistry problems with The Chemistry Composition Challenge lab. One problem requires students to determine the thickness of a piece of aluminum foil and compare their value to the actual one. Another has them determine the identity of an unknown metal by calculating its density. This resource includes extensive teacher notes to help you guide your students through this inquiry activity.

Finally, if you use The Temperature Guys video from our Founders of Chemistry series to introduce the topic of temperature conversions, we have added an activity sheet that includes questions for students to answer as they watch the video. Earlier this year we introduced our Student Pass benefit which allows your students to have access to any of the videos in our multimedia library. You can learn more about this new benefit in our February news post or on the Student Pass FAQs page on our website.

We hope that these activities can help you to reinforce several of the topics covered in a unit about chemical measurements. Most of these lessons were made possible by great teachers who shared their own resources. We need your help to keep the collection growing. Do you have a great demonstration, activity, or lesson related to this topic that you would like to share with the community? Please send it along for consideration.