These simple chemistry lab activities are low maintenance for you, require minimal chemicals, and still keep students engaged. Whether you’re wrapping up content, reviewing for a final, or just trying to make the last few weeks meaningful, these ideas are fun, hands on, and refreshingly doable. Trust me – I was doing most of them in an old art classroom with makeshift supplies.

And if you find yourself wishing you had more of these kinds of labs throughout the year, check out my Chemistry Lab Manual. It’s full of easy, low-prep labs (with a few classics sprinkled in) that span 15 units of study. You can use it now for end of year review and next school year to keep your sanity intact from day one.

How to Choose a Lab

There’s a few things to consider when building out your calendar and schedule for the last few days of science classes. Especially if you have a final exam to prepare for!

• It’s certainly best to focus on topics that your students struggle with. If your Acid Base unit was a breeze, you certainly don’t want to be spending time doing a titration!
• Consider the passage of time. If your Atomic Unit was 9 months ago, there are some potential gaps simply because it’s been a while. This is probably more true for things like average atomic mass, than it is for atomic structure. Atomic structure is part of nearly every chemistry lesson. Your students probably have a good handle on that. But isotopes may be a concept that’s been forgotten.
• What have you spiraled? Thinking again of isotopes – I review that in my Nuclear Unit. Which, I’m sure you know is the last unit I teach. (That’s because I teach “Chemistry is all about the electrons. Until you get to Nuclear.”) For my students and how I set up my curriculum, this isn’t something I’d spend time on.

If you’re in need of an end of year study guide for your students, look no further. Sign up and have one sent directly to you!

Atomic Candies

History and models of the atom is a very important concept to chemistry. It helps students to know that chemistry is based on indirect observations. Students come to learn that science is a body of knowledge that loads of people have contributed to and built upon over many, many years. But these atomic models aren’t revisited naturally in your content over the school year. After Bohr models and diagrams, the early stuff is easily forgotten. So if your students need a refresher I recommend the Atomic Candies lab at the end of your school year. All you’ll need is some sweet treats!

• A chocolate chip cookie
• A lollipop with a candy center
• A gum ball
• A layered jawbreak or Airheads Extreme (the idea is colorful layers)
• A marshmallow

Decide if you want 1 set of treats per student and how you want to distribute them. I usually sit at my kitchen table with ziplocks and create baggies the night before while watching something fun.

Your students are going to note prominent features of the atomic models and compare them to prominent features of the candies. Like the colored layers in a jawbreaker are kind of like the electron energy levels in a Bohr model! I have some “right” answers, but as long as students can justify their choice of which candy is paired to each model, I accept their answers. (And there’s another lesson in how scientists can back things up and give reasoning to their findings in different ways, and why we need the peer review process.) Get the lab here.

Average Atomic Mass of Candium

Like I mentioned, this is likely a topic your students haven’t seen or worked with for a while. And bringing candy into the classroom is always a win! In this activity, students work with a sample of “candium.” It’s really just three different size object of the same type. So three different sizes of M&Ms, three different sized pasta noodles, or something of the like. You can use coins, dried beans, pretzles… I like to grab movie theater candy boxes and get three different sized things. These function as three isotopes of the same element, “candium” “beanium” “pretzelium.” Your students do some simple math and boom! They’ve just re-learned average atomic mass. Plus, if you set this up “correctly” they can eat their chemical sample at the end of the lab. Get the lab here. Read more about how I set up this lab here.

Rutherford’s Gold Foil

Speaking of those forgotten atomic models, when I was teaching in New York, Rutherford’s experiment was always tested on the state final. So I found that this lab on the gold foil experiment was worth the time. It’s really fun to do. You use your Rutherford model made out of a hula hoop and a styrofoam ball suspended in the middle. Then your students throw alpha particles, (paper balls or ping pong balls) at the model and the class records the data. It’s a great lab to revisit during the year. It’s totally chemical free. Meaning the end of the year is a perfect time for this lab, when you’re running low on supplies. Get the lab here.

Periodic Table Guessing Game

Whether you want to use this lab for periodic table review, or save it for next year, you should click here to get it for free. Essentially, students work from a small pool of elements and have to ask their partner yes or no questions based on properties of elements to guess their partner’s element. It’s a great review of chemical and physical properties as well as periodic table trends. I like to use this lab as Periodic Table Unit review, but it works great at the end of the school year as well.

Removal of Sugar – Hydrate Lab

If your students need some work on their math skills before your final exam, this is a good lab for them at the end of the year. In this lab, you hand our bubble gum. Again, candy wins. Plus all you need in this lab is a balance, so it’s great when everybody starts packing things up at the end of the year. Your students will chew the gum to remove the sugar. They do percent error calculations comparing to the nutritional facts of the gum. It’s the same math your students would do if they dehydrated something like copper II sulfate pentahydrate. But you don’t have to break out all the equipment and chemicals. Get the lab here.

Sand & Salt

If separation of mixtures is needing some help, or perhaps lab procedures, this is a good one. You mix some samples of sand and salt (but make sure you know how much of each.) This lab will require the use of your lab equpiment. You’ll need to have the students dissolve the salt, filter out the sand, and then evaporate the water out, drying the salt. BUT this is a good lab for the end of the school year because it’s kind of laborous. It can help to bring back the review of lab equipment, procedures and safety. You can also stretch this lab out over a day or two if you simply need to chew up the clock. Get the lab here.

Freezing Point Depression Ice Cream

Want to have TONS OF FUN in the last days of your school year? Are you unafraid of messes? Do you have a good relationship with your custodial staff? If you answered “yes” take the time to make ice cream in your classroom. Yes, you need tons of supplies. Yes, it’s mentally and emotionally taxing, but you will have so much fun!

In this lab, ice is sprinkled with salt to dramatically drop the freezing point. A milk and sugar mixture is then slowly frozen and shaken in convert from milk to ice cream. It’s a simple lab in terms of the chemistry of it all. The materials, lab room and mess will certainly be a headache. Hey, if I get to “choose your hard” I’m picking the ice cream lab every time! It’s too fun to miss out on. Get the lab here.

Elephant’s Toothpaste

You can use this lab to review kinetics (catalysts), heat flow (endothermic and exothermic) or even how to run an experiment using multiple trials. In this lab yeast is used as a catalyst to remove oxygen from hydrogen peroxide. That oxygen will foam up dish detergent making a foam. The entire process releases a bunch of heat. It’s a really fun lab for the last days of school. Get the lab here.

Equilibrium Straws

This is the EASIEST lab there is. All you need is some graduated cylinders, water and straws. Water starts in one cylinder (reactants). Straws are used to swap water between two graduated cylinders (forward & reverse reactions) until equilibrium is reached. You can use this to review equilibrium, reversible reactions or even graphing. it’s one of my favorites because it’s just so easy. It really can’t be beat. Get the lab here.

Titration

If you have all your materials, or need to use up some expiring chemicals a titration is classic. This is on the list primarily for the review aspect. I’m not going to explain a titration to you, but here’s the benefits. Review of measurement and estimated digits, significant figures, titration calculations, acid base neutralization reactions, acid base indicators, lab safety and procedures… It’s especially good if you didn’t get to this during the school year, since it is a critical chemistry skill.

Polymerization Slime

Like the ice cream lab this one is a teacher headache that brings tons of smiles that make it worth it. In this lab, students are going to use glue and Borax solution to make slime. The glue is polymerized by the borax (a catalyst). This lab primarily is qualitative observations, which I know not every chemistry teacher loves. Honestly, it’s a way I have programmed into my curriculum for students to have fun. Plus they get to actually see an organic reaction. That’s not the easiest to do in a high school chemistry lab. (Especially in my old art classroom which was not a lab despite what admin tried to claim…) Get the lab here.

Half Life of a Skittle

This is something I would be doing at the end of the school year anyway, because Nuclear is always my last unit. BUT if you’re a rebel and teach Nuclear with or just after Atomic, this is a great end of year lab! Students have a sample of Skittles (or MMs or coins or anything double sided.) This represents atoms of a radioactive element. They shake them for the length of a half life (just a few seconds). Then they pour them out. The ones that are face up are stable and have decayed. The ones that are face down are still “radioactive” and go back to shaking.

If you do your Nuclear Unit at the end of the year, this is a good time for this lab just for the content, of course. But I have my students graph the decay of their “radioactive” sample. So it’s a good review of graphing if that’s a skill that needs some work! Get the lab here.

Grading End of Year Chemistry Lab Activities

At the end of the school year, attendance can get a little chaotic. Between AP tests, field trips, assemblies, cut days, and students missing class for who knows what, it can feel unfair to grade these labs the same way you would in the middle of the year.

Instead, I like to make these end of year chemistry labs a little more flexible. Depending on the situation, I may let the lab report:

• replace a quiz grade
• replace a low lab grade from earlier in the year
• count as extra credit
• count as a completion grade
• be optional for students who want a chance to improve their grade. (All students are going to DO the lab, but the report itself might be optional)

This takes some of the pressure off students while still encouraging them to participate. It also means that if half your class is gone for AP testing or a field trip, you do not have to stress about creating an entirely separate assignment for the students who are absent. The end of the year is crazy enough.

Personally, my favorite option is to let the lab replace a low lab grade from earlier in the year. Students are often much more motivated when they know they have a chance to improve an old score, and it feels more meaningful than simply handing out extra credit.

Fun or Practical? Choose Both!

You don’t have to choose between fun and practicality when it comes to end of year chemistry labs. These low-prep activities can help reinforce key concepts, help prepare for your final exam, and give students a chance to apply what they’ve learned. All without burning you out in the process! Because I know you’re running on fumes at this point. Having fun in the lab can be just what YOU NEED to make it through the last few weeks of the school year.

If you’re loving these kinds of low maintenance labs, you’ll definitely want to check out my Chemistry Lab Manual. It’s packed with simple, mostly chemical-free activities that are fun for students and easy on you. It covers 15 units of study, so while it’s perfect for wrapping up this year, it’ll also set you up for success all year long next school year. Grab it now, and you’ll be thanking yourself in August! Read more about the lab book here.

The post 12 Easy(ish) End of Year Lab Activities to Reduce the Chaos appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

As long as you tell your students to think about individual particles during this collision theory lab activity, it can certainly get the point across.  All you’ll need are some glow sticks and some warm and cold water. Those glow sticks must come in at least two different sizes.  I like to get the pendants and then the bracelets.

If you recall, the postulates of Collision Theory are that the reacting particles must collide with proper energy and orientation (effective collision) in order to have a chemical reaction.  And there are a few ways we can increase the number of effective collisions:   

1. Make sure our components are actually going to react with each other. 
2. Increase the temperature.
3. Increase pressure (if we’re working with a gas system)
4. Increase concentration
5. Increase surface area
6. Add a catalyst

Of course, we can’t do all of these at once, nor can we do all of them with glow sticks.  But this is a great activity to get the kids thinking about particles coming in contact with each other in order to react. You can have your students do this on their own, or you can do this as a demo.  It works well either way, I’ve done both. 

Trials for getting the particles to react: 

The first thing I do is crack two glow sticks.  I shake one and not the other. It’s a great way to get the ball rolling that the particles must come in contact in order to react.  The kids can very easily figure this one out. 

Then I take these two glow sticks and set one in hot water and one in cold water. 

While letting this sit for a minute, we crack two other glow sticks.  These two glow sticks are of two different sizes.  This has the kids realize that concentration is a factor in reaction rate.  When there’s more stuff to react, more stuff reacts. 

Then we head back to the warm and cold beakers. We make note of which glow stick is brighter.  After our observations, we swap the two glow sticks. We give them another minute or so, and make observations. I have a really good time lapse of swapping the two glow sticks you can see in the gif below.

Pushing Students to Extend Their Thinking

After the kids learn about the factors that affect solubility, this is really not that difficult of a concept for my students to pick up on.  And in my opinion that makes it a good inquiry activity for teaching collision theory. Many of my students struggle with this stuff. It’s hard for them to come up with rationale as to WHY a phenomena is happening.  Partly I think this is because of the educational blip of 2020.  But I also think that the phenomena teaching model is fairly new in science. Well not new.  But more so, “freshly mainstream.” Some of us having been doing it for a while, but not all of our students have. 

Get a list of my Free Kinetics & Equilibrium Phenomena here. Read more about them in detail in this post.

After the kids have figured out how concentration, contacts and temperature affect reaction rate we synthesize as a class.  Then I make sure to ask them to hypothesize the other factors: surface area, pressure and use of a catalyst.  I’ll then teach a lesson on collision theory and let them know whether they were right or wrong.  I prefer to get it all out on the table, BUT you could hold off. 

I like to use the Elephant’s Toothpaste lab activity to have them learn about catalysts and measure heat flow. We do this lab with my thermodynamics unit, but you very well could do this in your kinetics unit.  Read more about the Elephant’s Toothpaste heat flow lab here.

The post Inquiry Activity for Teaching Collision Theory appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

But “inquiry” is one of those admin-loved education terms. It gets thrown around with “differentiation,” “data,” and “homogeneous grouping.” But does admin even know that there are four main types of inquiry learning for science classes? My guess is no. So they should probably stop throwing around the term like it’s confetti. (No shade to confetti.) 

Each type of inquiry learning has its own place in your chemistry classroom:

1. Confirmation Inquiry

In confirmation inquiry, students already know the expected outcome before they begin. The goal is to confirm a known principle or relationship using a familiar procedure. It’s the perfect confidence builder (making it one of my favorites)! It helps students to connect what they already know in real life to chemistry. I love this in my Factors that Affect Solubility Lab. My students obviously know that stirring is going to help a soluble solid dissolve in water. But seeing it in action helps to make what I’ve taught them in class make a bit more sense.

Or in my Law of Conservation Lab, (available in my Full Year Chemistry Lab Book, as well as the Mini Lab Book) students learn the Law of Conservation in class and test it in the lab. They crack a glow stick, react vinegar and baking soda, and water with an Alka-Seltzer tablet. In every test they conserve matter, just as expected. 

Confirmation inquiry is great for introductory labs or something your students learned in years’ past but are reviewing. I like to think of it as a confidence builder. Activities like these help to reinforce new concepts before moving on to something more complex. 

2. Structured Inquiry

In structured inquiry, students don’t know the outcome yet, but you still give them the question and the procedure. Their job is to carry out the experiment, collect data, and make sense of the results. This is the type of inquiry most chemistry teachers already use, whether they realize it or not. Students explore an unknown result, but the process stays manageable and safe. Structured inquiry is more than likely what you’ve used for most of the labs you’ve done in your class.

As a young teacher I didn’t always feel confident that my students were going to write up a good procedure that was safe enough. I relied heavily on structured inquiry. An excellent example of this is my Elephant’s Toothpaste lab. The students are given an entire procedure, as well as pre and post lab questions. Students test for the heat flow of the reaction and write a really nice meaty conclusion paragraph. The questions help to guide their conclusion, and it comes out really great. Especially when you include the lab guide, How to Write a Chemistry Lab Report, that you can get for free, right here. It’s perfect for everyday labs and building up the basic lab skills your students need to head off to college. 

3. Guided Inquiry

In guided inquiry, students are given the question but have to design their own procedure to find the answer. This step is where curiosity really starts to shine. Students plan how to collect data, decide what variables to control, and determine how to analyze their results. As students are working, you can guide them with probing questions to get them to the right answer. Now I’ll be honest, I don’t use this one very often. For me, it’s a safety thing. When I have some simpler labs with basic materials, I’m much more willing to “cut student loose” and let them get to work solving a problem. This works really well for students in your honors classes, or where your students are academically strong and could use a challenge. Honestly, it even works well for your more loud and rambunctious classes. I find that kids like that often need “a project” to keep them from going crazy stuck in a desk. Plus the collaboration you’ll see as they work out the problem is stellar. 

These are seriously SO EASY to integrate into your repertoire. If you’re working with digital copies of the lab before running copies, just cut out the procedure. (Make sure to paste it back just in case you don’t want to do it as a guided inquiry lab next year.) If you have a pdf that you can’t edit, or a printed copy passed down from a veteran teacher (I LOVE hand-me-downs) just run copies with a bit of white paper taped over the procedure section. 

If you’re nervous about trying this, do it with a low maintenance lab that doesn’t include a ton of chemicals. You can read about 15 of those “almost” chemical free chemistry labs here to learn a bit more. Unless your students are very well versed in safety and you’re comfortable with the situation, I’d stick to something lightweight. No Bunsen burners or corrosives in my guided inquiry! 

4. Open Inquiry

Open inquiry is the ultimate level of student independence. Students develop the question, design the procedure, and analyze the results on their own, just like professional chemists do. It’s exciting and empowering, but it can also feel chaotic if students aren’t ready. Open inquiry works best once they’ve had lots of practice with the other three levels. I’ve done this once or twice. The easiest way to do it? A science fair project. That is unless you have the students answering a specific chemistry question. Then that’s a bit more like a split between guided and open inquiry. 

If you’re interested in a science fair project, you check out my Student Science Fair Planning Guide. It’s a great option if your students are a little confused on where to start. Otherwise, the open inquiry is great for capstone activities, enrichment projects, or your project based learning curricula. The time I taught project based chemistry the students needed a lot of guidance, and this wasn’t a good fit for them. 

It’s a lot easier to figure out which type of inquiry chemistry activities are best for your classroom once you’re in it. When you know your students and what they’re capable of, it’s a smaller best, for sure. And if you’re a little uneasy about getting started, I’d start simple and work your students up to open inquiry. 

How to Use Inquiry-Based Learning in Chemistry Without Losing Your Mind

The key is to scaffold! Start small and increase independence as students gain confidence.Inquiry doesn’t have to mean chaos. 

You might begin with a confirmation lab early in the year, transition to structured labs once students understand basic procedures, sprinkle in guided activities to push their critical thinking, and reserve open inquiry for your end of the year formative assessment. 

Your inquiry activities don’t even have to be lab activities. Anything that gets students asking questions works well. That can be something like a logic puzzle, or even one of my chemistry mysteries. These types of activities get students thinking the same way that they do in a lab. PROBLEM SOLVING! 

And that’s really what inquiry is right? Asking questions and solving problems. Inquiry-based learning in chemistry doesn’t require a total classroom overhaul. It just means shifting from “follow my directions” to “what do you think will happen if…?” You can work your way up from there.

The post The Four Types of Inquiry-Based Learning in Chemistry and How to Use Them in Your Classroom appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

In this simple, hands-on activity, students determine the mass of one hidden object without ever seeing what’s inside the container. It’s a perfect entry point into the mole concept because it connects an abstract idea to a concrete experience, just like we do in chemistry when we group atoms into moles.

Chemistry Background: Understanding the Mole Concept

The mole is chemistry’s way of grouping particles, just like a “dozen” means 12. One mole represents 6.02 × 10²³ atoms, or molecules.

Why do we need such a large number? Because atoms are incredibly small. Just as we might measure sand by the bucket rather than individual grains, chemists measure matter by moles instead of atoms.

Every substance has its own molar mass, which tells us the mass of one mole of that substance in grams. For example:

• 1 mole of hydrogen atoms = 1.008 g
• 1 mole of oxygen atoms = 16.00 g
• 1 mole of water molecules (H₂O) = 18.016 g
  

If you have 2 moles of water, that’s 36.032 g. One and a half moles? 27.024 g. Chemists use these relationships to “count” atoms by weighing samples instead of trying to tally each one individually. This is exactly the skill students develop in the Counting by Weighing Lab Activity, but on a much smaller scale. A smaller scale makes it easier to wrap your mind around the concept of counting by weighing before getting into the largeness of a mole. 

How to Set Up the Lab

For this lab, students are challenged to count by weighing the sample and then find the mass of one hidden object without opening the container and handling the items inside. You’ll provide several beakers, each containing multiple identical items like crayons, pennies, or pink erasers (whatever you have). Students use an electronic balance to find the total mass, then divide by the number of items contained in the bundles to determine the mass of one object.

The point is to make a unique sized bundle that applies to all of the stations you set up. I like to call them “Reavy Bundles” which is usually 8 items. So I’ll build my first sample, which is 3 Reavy Bundles of crayons. Students have to determine that means they’re handling 24 crayons. Perhaps the next station is 0.75 Reavy Bundles of pink erasers. That’s got 6 pink erasers in it. This also helps students to see that your atoms don’t have to come in exactly a mole, but can come in fractions of moles too. 

Materials Needed

• Beakers
• Paper towel, shopping bags or something similar to hide your items from view
• Identical small objects (beans, pennies, marbles, Cheerios, paperclips, etc.)
• Electronic balance
• Optional: beaker and bag mass values for more precise calculations

Student Task

1. Measure the total mass of each container.
2. Subtract the container’s mass to find the total mass of the hidden items.
3. Determine the number of items in the container
4. Divide total mass by number of items to find the mass of one.

Students then apply their methods to some post lab questions to ensure they’re fully understanding how this should play out. 

My Tips for This Lab

After running this lab many times, here’s what I’ve found works best:

1. Use “Bundles” Instead of “Moles.”
I call them “Reavy Bundles” to help students think of a mole as just a counting unit. I usually pick 12 per bundle since it relates to the idea of a “dozen,” but you can choose any manageable number.

2. Hide the Contents Well.
Part of the magic is the mystery! I place the items inside grocery bags and then into beakers to keep the contents hidden. Students should not rely on sight, only mass.

3. Mix It Up with Stations.
I love running this as a stations activity. Each beaker contains a different type of object (marbles, paperclips, beans, etc.), all in some quantity of the bundles. Students quickly realize that while each “bundle” has the same number of objects, their masses are very different, just like moles of different substances.

4. Add a Challenge.
Label some beakers “3 Reavy Bundles of paperclips” or “0.5 Reavy Bundles of beans.” Students must scale their calculations, reinforcing the relationship between moles, mass, and particle quantity.

Extra Information and Closing Thoughts

Now you make be thinking, “This is great but that seems like a really simple lab activity. I’m not sure this is rigorous enough for my students.” And to some extent, I’d agree with you, but you know I’m practically the queen of making things easy for me, and rigorous (tough) for my students. You can read more in this blog post about how I increase the rigor of my labs by having my students write thorough conclusions.

This counting by weighing lab activity makes a fantastic introduction to your stoichiometry unit. If you’re introducing moles for the first time, this activity will make the concept concrete and memorable. Students love this hands on activity. And teachers love it because it builds the perfect foundation for more advanced skills, like converting between grams, moles, and particles. By the end, your students will understand that chemists don’t need to see atoms to count them. They’ll have experienced the power of counting by weighing, and that’s what makes chemistry both challenging and fun.

If you love this lab and are interested in other low maintenance labs, check out this post where I share 15 labs I love!

The post Counting by Weighing: A Hands-On Lab to Teach the Mole Concept appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

Materials Needed

• Graduated cylinders
• Beakers
• Stirring rods
• Sugar cubes
• Pre-measured sugar samples (2.5 grams each)

Procedure

Students will do trials for each of the following.

1. Surface Area:
   • Place equal amounts of water in two beakers.
   • Add a sugar cube to one beaker and granulated sugar to the other. (They love the sugar cubes for some reason.)
   • Observe which dissolves more readily, discussing how surface area impacts solubility.
2. Temperature:
   • Prepare warm water (20-30°C above tap temperature).
   • Add equal amounts of water and sugar to two beakers.
   • Compare the dissolution rates, emphasizing temperature’s role in solubility.
3. Agitation:
   • Using tap water, add sugar to two beakers.
   • Stir one solution and leave the other unstirred.
   • Discuss how agitation affects the rate of dissolving.
4. Concentration
   • Add equal amounts of water to two beakers
   • Add 2.5 grams of sugar to one beaker and 10 grams to the other
   • After a few minutes, compare the amount of sugar dissolved in each beaker

Lab Set Up – Solubility Factors

I’ve done the set up a few different ways.  I initially did this lab as a stations lab simply because I didn’t have enough stirring rods for each group of students to have their own, but once I got a full lab that wasn’t a problem. 

So I give the kids graduated cylinders, 2 beakers, a stirring rod, a sugar cube and 5 pre-measured samples of sugar, weighing in at 2.5 grams.  There aren’t enough balances for me to give one to every pair of students (I’d need 13 of them). This is especially hard when the other science teachers in the department are looking for the balances.  It’s just easier for me to pre-measure the samples. The kids measure out the water in the graduated cylinders. We have the proper materials for this, and to be honest, my kids could use the practice.

Quick Tips

The Sugar Cube

I always try to get the sugar cube out of the way quickly. I find the students are absolutely fascinated with the sugar cube. Apparently it’s the little things in life.

Types of Data

While I prefer the qualitative data in this lab you can get quantitative data if you prefer. You could add in stopwatches to evaluate how much time it takes for a sample to dissolve. (But be prepared to have a max amount of time allotted since some of these samples can sit a long time before full dissolution.  

Warming the Water

Any time I can skip the hotplate or Bunsen burner, I’m usually going to do it. In any lab I’ve had, I can only get hot water to run out of one sink. For that reason, I find it’s easier to heat water in my electrical kettle. I only warm the water 20 to 30 degrees warmer than the tap water to see the difference in dissolving rates. No ned to come to a full boil.

Student Led Teaching

My favorite part of this lab is having a kid “be the teacher.” This kid will get up in front of the room, makes sure everyone calls them Ms. or Mr. Whomever and teaches the factors that affect solubility.  I like to pick a kid that needs a little extra love or attention. I’ve also been known to pick a trouble maker. It gets them to realize what it feels like to be a teacher.

One of the reasons this lab is so successful is because it’s pretty intuitive. The kids kind of know what the answers are supposed to be. The lab is really just to get them to solidify their preconceptions. It can also correct a few kids who may have something backwards. 

Aside from supervising the lab and making sure nobody is getting hurt or doing the wrong thing, this is a pretty easy day for me.  It’s a green chemistry lab. So I don’t have to worry much about the chemicals (just contamination from the equipment, really). You can read more about my green chemistry labs here. 

You can get the specific lab form I use here. I hope this gives you an idea on how you can morph your factors that affect solubility lab or activity so that it’s easier on you! You can also read more about how my students write lab reports here, or skip the reading and just get a copy of the free lab rubric I use instead.

The post Exploring the Factors that Affect Solubility: A Hands-On Lab Activity appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

Some reasons you may want to pursue a green chemistry lab:

• you’re not interested exposing yourself or your students to harmful chemicals (not all chemicals are harmful!)
• you’re not interested in the sometimes detailed disposal of harmful chemicals
• you are looking for home school chemistry experiments
• your science budget isn’t what you wished it was, and you are looking for some less expensive alternatives
• you don’t have a full-blown chemistry lab for you and your students to work in. (This was my experience my first years of teaching.)

If you are in need of a lab rubric, click here to sign up and have an email sent to you!

Oobleck Chemistry Lab Activity

My matter and energy unit comes in the middle of the year as we transition from microchemistry to macrochemistry.  Oobleck is a mixture of cornstarch and water. The name “Oobleck” was made famous by the Dr. Seuss book, Bartholomew and the Oobleck. Essentially, oobleck is goo, (non-Newtonian fluid) that I use to get my students to learn the effect of pressure on phase of matter. When this mixture is allowed to run or is poured (low pressure situations) it will act as if it is a liquid.  As soon as pressure is applied, the oobleck begins to act like a solid. It can be rolled in your hands, but as soon as the rolling action stops, the oobleck will run like liquid through your fingers.

Most students already know that temperature can affect the phase of a sample of matter, but few know about the effects of pressure.  I use this activity to get them to realize that liquids are (mildly) compressible. This leads us to the discussion on how pressure can also be used to change between the phases. 

Atomic Theory Green Chemistry Lab

This Rutherford Model of the Atom lab has been a crowd favorite since I was still working on my Master’s (my pre-teaching days).  You and your students model Rutherford’s Gold Foil Experiment. Essentially you have students throw ping-pong balls which represent alpha particles, toward your Rutherford model.  Balls of paper work well, too. The model is constructed from a hula-hoop, and a ball dangling in the center which represents the nucleus of a gold atom. Depending on how advanced your curriculum or standards are, you can talk about the nucleus to atom size ratio and the validity of models in science. You can read more about that experiment here.

Spectral Lines Chemistry Lab

Now depending on how you look at this, this may or may not be a green chemistry lab. For me, it is. This lab is not something I would have been able to do in my lab-less situation during my early years of teaching, so I understand the argument – trust me. This lab technically does not produce chemicals that are harmful to you or the environment, and as long as you have the proper equipment it’s super simple. It’s essentially a point and shoot. Turn off the lights, draw the shades and let the kids read their hand-held spectroscopes and determine the identify of the gas in the tube. Most of these tubes get pretty toasty, so be careful!

Factors that Affect Solubility Lab

This lab shows the solubility of solids and the factors that help them dissolve. Here, students are working with sugar and water and they test four different variables for solubility of solids: surface area, agitation, concentration and temperature. My students go crazy for this lab simply because so few of them have ever seen a sugar cube in real life. I mean who even uses them anymore? I sometimes have a hard time finding them in the store, but I can usually find them on the very bottom shelf at my grocery store. You can read more about this specific lab here.

Effects of Intermolecular Forces

Intermolecular forces are really tough to demonstrate, but their effects are super easy to see! Surface tension is one of my favorite effects of intermolecular forces, simply due to the relation to real life. In this lab, you’d take a penny and count the number of drops of different substances that fit on its surface. Pennies work well because they are smaller, so data is quicker to collect. You can do this plain water, salt water and soapy water, or you can use different oils, like baby oil or vegetable oil. Just make sure to clean the penny in between each trial. You can read more about the lab here.

Intro to Stoichiometry Lab

This lab is for basic gram and mole conversions. Students find the mass of a few basic things in your classroom and convert those masses to moles. This lab gets students prepared for some of the bigger stoichiometry skills that will be coming their way. My favorite part of this lab is when students write their names on the board and find out how many moles of chalk it takes to do it. Many of them write the sweetest messages, or draw silly pictures. If you don’t have a chalk board, you could use crayons too!

Like Dissolves Like Lab Activity

Depending on how you take this lab, this could be a green chemistry lab. In this lab, students mix different solutions with water to check its molecular polarity. I’ve made homemade Aqua Sand that I mix into the lab to make it super engaging for my students. This requires sand to be sprayed with some waterproofing camping spray – so maybe this isn’t entirely green. If you ditch the Aqua Sand, it totally is though! If you’re not happy with this being a part of the list, I’ve added a bonus green chemistry lab at the end of this post for you! You can read more about this specific activity and the hydrophobic sand, check out this blog post.

Acid-Base Kitchen Chemistry Lab

Did you know that cabbage juice is an acid-base indicator?  So cool, right?! Well this is a great introduction lab for standards and stock solutions.  My students boil some red cabbage to get the juice. But you can do this at home the night before. Or even just let the cabbage soak in water for a bit.  The darker the purple color the better! Then in a spot plate, put a few drops of solutions with known pH values and create an indicator color chart.

In order to keep this “authentically green chemistry” then you would use regular household items, like lemon juice, and soaps. There are plenty of household items to test! Maybe, even have your students bring in a sample of something they are interested in testing! You can also give the students a few unknowns to test, to compare to the knowns.  If you wanted to be “super sciencey” with this, you can then move the unknown solutions into a titration to be totally sure of the pH value.

Kinetics Green Chemistry Lab

This lab requires a trip to the beauty supply store.  You’ll need to get some liquid developer, which is really a hydrogen peroxide solution. This is stronger than hydrogen peroxide from the drugstore.  Mix this with some liquid dish soap and swirl it around. I let my students add food coloring to make this a bit more interesting. You will need to add this solution to the “reaction vessel”  which for me is an Erlenmeyer. I like to leave these directly on my lab bench and squeegee the mess into the sink. If you don’t have that option, I suggest placing the Erlenmeyer in a disposable aluminum baking pan.

In a beaker, mix some warm water with some instant yeast.  If you don’t have instant yeast, give this solution a few minutes to “activate.” Five or ten minutes will do. The yeast is your catalyst for ripping the oxygen off the peroxide. Pour the yeast mixture into the reaction vessel and BOOM! you have kinetics! This same reaction would not happen without the yeast (you can of course have your students try it). This leads to a great discussion on activation energy and the use of catalysts.  This lab is one of my favorites because it reminds me of when my childhood friend Emily and I would mix vinegar and baking soda on the curb and let it run down the street. What can I say, I’ve been a science nerd forever. You can read more about the lab here.

Organic Chemistry Green Chemistry Lab

If you have a child aged 5-18 during the years 2014-2017 you lived through the “Slime Era” of the internet.  Fortunately for you, I started my teaching career during this time and I used that to my advantage! Technically, making slime out of glue is a polymerization, meaning when the kids make the slime, they are actually completing a chemical reaction!  There are a million recipes out there, but we use a simple, cheap and easy recipe.

You’ll need some glue, and a box of Borax and some disposable or preferably reusable bowls and spoons. That box of Borax will last forever, trust me. Mix equal amounts of glue and water in a bowl.  Gently mix (whisking motions) until thoroughly combined. Add in food coloring and glitter if desired. I make a “master solution” of the polymerizer. I take around 2 tablespoons of Borax per liter of water and distribute it to the kids in cups. They then mix the solution with their glue until they get a polymer.  When you think the mixture needs “just a little bit more” solution, it is time to massage the slime by hand. If the slime is “over-polymerized” you can add some water until it softens up. My students get to bring their slime home in sandwich bags. It is such a fun time!

I’ve since decided that we should skip the bowls and make the slime directly in the sandwich bags. And it works very well! It’s less messy as well, which is great!

Bonus: Solutions Green Chemistry Lab

The holy grail of chemistry labs – making ice cream by the science of freezing point depression.  I have my students bring in toppings, salt and bowls. I bring the milk. We have an ice machine in the school, so I bring a cooler and have a few kids go pick it up and haul the cooler to my room. Here’s the steps:

Ice Cream in a Bag Procedure

• Fill a gallon bag about halfway with ice and pour a generous amount of rock/coarse/Kosher salt.
• Inside a sandwich sized bag, add 1 cup of milk, half a cup of sugar. Or less – I have the students stick their finger in the bag for a taste test). And ¼ teaspoon of vanilla extract.  For chocolate ice cream I have the kids do 1 cup of milk with ⅓ to ½ a cup of Nesquik for the flavor. (Cocoa powder is too bitter for most kids). 
• Put the sandwich bag inside the gallon bag, and maneuver so that the sandwich bag is surrounded. 
• Shake until milk is firm.

Obviously this only works with the salt in the bag because the salt, drops the freezing point of the ice. Viola! You have ice cream and a Colligative Properties Lab Activity! You can read more about my ice cream lab here!

Conclusion

I hope that these green chemistry labs help you to make environmentally conscious changes in your classroom that both you and your students will love and remember for years to come! You can read more about how my students write lab reports here. While you can get these labs individually in my TPT store, you can get my entire lab manual (which is mostly green chemistry labs) too. You can get all 10 of these labs, plus 31 more in a book that’ll last you the whole school year. It’s a great solution to those of us who don’t have the materials you wish you had in your chemistry lab.

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Teacher preparation of the freezing point depression lab

I don’t know how you go about getting all these things.  That is going to depend on your individual situation. I bring the milk and a cooler, and my students handle the rest. 

Here is what you’ll need:

• A cooler to store the ice.  It should be clean enough that it can get close to food, please don’t borrow a cooler from the biology department. 
• Ice and lots of it – you probably have an ice machine in your cafeteria or in a locker room
• Coarse Salt (I used about 20 pounds for 90 kids)
• WHOLE MILK – you need the fat to make this delicious – no word from me on the non-dairy alternative, but I’ll update this post if I hear anything
• Sugar (probably a 5 pound bag)
• Vanilla Extract
• Nesquik (for chocolate!)
• Gallon Bags
• Sandwich Bags
• Bowls
• Spoons
• Tablecloths (if you want a quick clean up method)
• A custodian on call to mop your floor when you inevitably have a spill (I even clip a $10 bill to my board at the end of the day for my custodian to get himself a drink at happy hour as a thank you. If he’s happy my room is given special attention.)

Your students should already know that salt is used to drop the freezing point of water.  This isn’t a lesson in teaching, this is for application, and snacking, and fun. 

To Make it Easy: 

This is what you’ll need for every students you have. But you certainly can cut this recipe in half to save on the food ingredients.

• A bowl
• A spoon
• 1 cup of milk, remember there are 16 cups in a gallon
• ¼ teaspoon of vanilla extract (I keep a set of measuring cups in my classroom – I’m afraid I’ll forget to bring my own kitchen set, or they will accidentally be thrown out)
• 1 sandwich bag
• 1 gallon bag (you can save these and reuse – cheaper bags tend to rip though)
• Vanilla
  • ¼ cup of sugar (this is high but the kids don’t mind)
• Chocolate
  • ¼ cup Nesquik

Freezing Point Depression Ice Cream Procedure

Here’s how it’s done

1. Fill a gallon bag about 2/3 full with ice
2. In the sandwich bag add 1 cup of milk and ¼ teaspoon of vanilla extract
   1. For vanilla add ¼ cup of sugar
   2. For chocolate add ¼ cup of Nesquik powder
3. Squeeze all the air out of the milk bag and zip it shut. 
4. Put the milk bag in the ice bag.  Try to wedge the bag into the middle of the ice
5. Pour salt all over the ice.  Like ALL over it. 
6. Shake for 10-15 minutes

If you are interested in cutting back on some ingredients, you can have students pair up and put two sandwich bags in each gallon bag. They can take turns shaking. The bags get VERY cold, so switching off can be helpful. Plus you will save on salt, ice and gallon bags. You can even have them split a sandwich bag. A cup of ice cream is quite a bit! Half a cup would still be fun, delicious, and the amount of learning would be the same!

You’ll know the shaking is done when the milk has firmed up and become ice cream, but this does come down to personal preference. Remove the sandwich bag and give it a rinse with cold water.  This will prevent any salt water from dripping on the ice cream. Squeeze the ice cream out into a bowl and decorate with toppings. 

Colligative Properties

This lab is perfect to integrate into your solutions unit when you teach colligative properties, or you can do it for Mole Day (read more about that here), or the day before a break, when it’s hard to schedule anything.  It’s never a bad time for ice cream! You can find the specific lab form I use with my students here!

I don’t teach the math of colligative properties, just the concepts. This is the reason why my kids don’t have to measure the temperature of the ice and salt mixture, nor measure the salt.

Colligative Properties Lab for Remote Learning

I did this lab with some of my remote students. I simply gave my students a grocery list and told them what they would need. Then I used my Chromebook to show the process and explain how they should carry out the procedure. The kids were able to make the ice cream in their kitchens and had a great time! Some even invited their siblings to make ice cream with them, which simply makes a teacher’s heart glow.

I have hybrid students, that are at school every other day, and I have some remote students. To accommodate all students, I gave two assignments over two days. Because it is the end of our learning unit, the students will do a test on one day, and the lab on the other. The kids that are hybrid will do the lab in school with me. Any students that were full remote could be my virtual lab partner, or do the lab on their own, then do the test the following day. Not ideal, but nothing about remote teaching really is…

PS: This lab is a green chemistry lab, meaning that it doesn’t produce chemicals that are harmful to the environment.  Read more about my favorite green chemistry labs here!  I don’t often have my students write a lab report for this activity. Because you know, that would put a major damper on ice cream. But if your kids need something academic to justify having this much fun at school (admin probs, I get it) grab a free copy of my lab rubric here.

The post The Most Delicious Lab of All Time – Freezing Point Depression appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

Molarity Background

When a chemist makes a solution, it’s important for them to know “how much stuff is in their other stuff.” Or really, how much solute is in the solvent (usually water). But terms like “dilute” and “concentrated” are relative terms. They can change depending on what other solutions show up to the lab bench. A solution that looks concentrated can all of a sudden seem dilute if a deeper, richer in color solution shows up. 

Chemists make a point to quantify what is dissolved in the water of their solutions. Sometimes they do it as a percentage by mass or volume.  Other times, especially when the concentration is small, they work in parts per million. But the most common is molarity – the amount of solute in moles, dissolved in liters of solution. 

The reason for using molarity is that it is the fastest way to compare the concentrations of solutions where the solutes have vastly different masses. For example, 1M NaCl vs, 1M CuSO₄. The molar mass of NaCl is 58 grams and CuSO₄ is 155 grams. But if you have one mole of each of them in one liter of solution, the number of ions in each solution is equal (since they appear in a 1:1 ratio). 

Set Up

In this molarity lab activity, students are going to make solutions of Koolaid with different conentrations. They’ll have to do some calculations to figure out how much sugar is used to make each solution. I like to allow my students to drink the solutions they make, so in that case, they would need to have food safe measuring tools. I have my students use my food safe balances, fresh weigh boats and paper cups. 

Really if everything is food safe, it’s a lot of fun and a really simple lab. Plus it’s delicious so it tricks your students into doing chemistry and molarity calculations they don’t really want to do!

My Tips

Using a Different Solute

If your intention is to use the materials in your stockroom, I suggest using CuSO₄ as the salt. (Obviously in this case, they can’t taste the chemistry.) That’s because it’ll create a colored solution (thanks to the transition metal). Plus it’s not tooooo ugly of a heavy metal. I also like having this on hand for precipitation reactions, since sulfates make pretty good precipitates. 

Importance of the Visual

I think the really important part about this lab is the concentration of the color of the solution. The visual is really going to help your students commit the importance of concentration to memory. If you were to do this lab with sodium chloride, for example, it wouldn’t give the same visual effect. I mean, if you did that food safe, I guess you could have your students drink it to try to understand, but that’s super gross. 

Cutting Down on Materials

If you really wanted to cut down on materials, instead of dissolving in 250 mL of water (1 – 8oz cup) you could instead cut down the water to 25 mL (just short of 1 oz, which is about 30 mL) and put the solutions into a spot plate to observe differences. The white ceramic spot plate is my favorite, but the plastic with a sheet of white paper underneath works well too. It’ll be up to you if you want to arrange this lab to be food safe for the taste test. 

Get the Lab

You can get this molarity lab activity individually from my TPT store. Or upgrade to the full year chemistry lab manual. You can read more about it here. 

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History of the Atom Interactive Notebook

At the beginning of the Atomic Theory Unit, I teach the History of the Atom using guided notes. They learn all the atomic models at one time. This sort of sets them up for everything that is to come and gets them excited for the different models. It also gets them to see how the atomic models have changed over time with new technologies and discoveries.

It brings up a great discussion about the validity of models and the idea that science is only as good as it can be for the time. I often talk about the advancements to calculators, computers or phones to help them make connections to their real life.  Even if you just talk about the iphone, most kids can see the changes made as technology has become more advanced. You can watch me teach my lesson Youtube!

History of the Atom Lab Activity

The next thing we do is differentiate atomic models by their most prominent features.  I do this by giving my students a bag of treats: a marshmallow, a Tootsie Pop or Blow Pop, a Gobstopper (mini jawbreaker), a gumball and a chocolate chip cookie. (Gobstoppers are becoming hard to find these days. If I were doing this lab now, I would give out Airheads Xtremes. Since they have colored stripes. The idea is that you want layers to represent the orbitals in the Bohr Model.)

They then need to decide which treat matches each model of the atom and give a thoughtful justification. This really engages them to identify prominent differences in the atomic models. Plus it’s delicious! You can read more about this specific lab activity in this post.

Rutherford Model Gold Foil Experiment Simulation

Teaching the Rutherford Model of the atom is a great way to REALLY introduce the concept of indirect observation. Which is a critical part of chemistry. I find it helps the kids to open up to the idea of studying things they can’t see. And that’s what chemistry is all about, right?

We do a pretty cool lab where the students need to throw ping pong balls, representing alpha particles at the Rutherford model I have made out of a hula-hoop, a Styrofoam ball and some string (which represents a single gold atom).  I have more details about this specific lab activity on my Rutherford Lab blog post.

Most of the ping pong balls go straight through the hula-hoop, just like the alpha particles and the gold foil.  This gives the kids a chance to see the things that Rutherford couldn’t. Plus, I can only imagine how fun it must be to throw ping pong balls toward (at) your teacher. You can purchase the lab activity here.

Electron Excitation Analogy

In another guided notes lesson,  I teach electron excitation using an analogy. Electrons live in the orbitals like people live in an apartment building with no elevator.  They prefer to be at lower levels so they don’t have to climb the stairs. Electrons, just like people would prefer their own room, and only share if they really have to.  I hope you picked up the analogy for both the Aufbau Principle and Hund’s Rule. #teacherwin!

At some point, the whole building throws a party in the penthouse apartment. The electrons drink some Red Bull to get enough energy to party all night and climb all those stairs.  (Red Bull gives them wings, of course!) Once the party is over, electrons have to give up their party energy and head home, thus giving off all their energy (in the form of light).

Flame Test Lab

This was certainly my favorite lab in high school.  It is the one that turned me into a chemist. I love teaching the Bohr model alongside some electron excitation.  Try to tell me that the science of fireworks is boring. Here is how to set up a flame test lab: 

Flame Test Lab Set Up

1. Collect all the chloride salts you have in your stockroom.  Mine are (mostly) solutions, but if you need to make a flame test solution, I would recommend a 1 molar solution.  You can probably get away with just 20-30 mL of each solution. 
2. Soak wooden splints (COFFEE STIRRERS) in the solutions over night.  The longer they soak the wetter they are. When they are wet, the splint takes a longer time to catch fire, which keeps the orange flame out of your flame test for a bit longer. 
3. If you have the opportunity to buy chlorides, here is what I think is coolest:
   1. Sodium chloride is the easiest to come by and of course is the lamest orange color.  It is cool to turn the blue cone into orange, but the kids sort of expect it. Start with this one when you do the lab, considering it is the least impressive
   2. Strontium chloride gives a sweet deep orangey red flame
   3. Barium chloride gives a lime-ish color, which the kids love
   4. Potassium chloride is a lavender color which is awesome, but can be hard to see when mixed in with the blue flame of a Bunsen burner – make sure the room is dark so you can see this one well. 
   5. Copper chloride (obviously) – the most beautiful blue green color
4. If your students have never lit a Bunsen burner before, I’d start there.  I have a lab activity on that if you are interested in them learning all the parts of the burner and getting practice lighting it on their own. 

Have Fun with It

These are some of my favorite ways to teach the different models of the atom and show how they’ve changed over time. The history of the atom is very difficult for kids to understand because they’re learning about things they’ve never seen before. They need to understand that the atom hasn’t changed, just our understanding of it has. You can get a majority of these activities in my History of the Atom Bundle.

You’re teaching chemistry because it’s fun! Remember that!! I hope that you and your students enjoy these super engaging atomic model activities as much as me and my students do!

The post 5 Engaging Ways to Teach the History of the Atom appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

Background: 

The stronger an intermolecular force is, the greater the surface tension of the substance.  Water, for example, has hydrogen bonds, and therefore its molecules stick together very well. It’s hard to get them to boil. It’s tough for the particles to evaporate (vapor pressure). And finally, it’s easy for them to bubble up and stick together – and you can see it happen on the surface of a coin. 

This is the final lab that I do in my Intermolecular Forces Unit.  We would have already learned bond polarity, molecule polarity, dipole-dipole forces and hydrogen bonds, dispersion forces and lastly the effects of intermolecular forces. You can read more about the demos that I do for that entire unit in this post.

The students would have also done the like dissolves like lab activity. You can also see how this plays out in my chemistry curriculum outline.  

Up until this point, there’s not a lot of labs that allow students to really see the chemistry.  I like to teach the “micro” units before the “macro” units. This is really the first taste of how chemistry looks in the real world for my students. And for that reason it’s a lot of fun. It’s also a super low maintenance lab which means its not a lot of set up for me!

Set Up: 

For this lab I set the students up with a penny, a few paper towels, beakers with chemicals and some droppers.  I’ve switched up the chemicals depending on what I have in my stock closet. I will always use water, and then I use a high percentage rubbing alcohol.  I prefer to use baby oil, because it is a very thin oil and pretty easy to clean up. I’ve also tried using salt water and soapy water. Although I never measure how I make these solutions…

Students put the penny on the paper towel and test how many drops of each solution will fit on the surface before it falls off. They keep track of the data and calculate the averages. It’s a really simple lab for seeing the effects of intermolecular forces. It certainly beats tracking vapor pressure like I did in my quantitative analysis class!

My Tips:

1. I prefer to give my students all of the materials that they need and have them work at a single lab station for the duration of the experiment. But this lab could also work well as a stations labs activity if you prefer that. I can understand in terms of cleaning up the mess and limiting materials that this could make sense for you. 
2. Have students hold the dropper vertically. If they hold it to the side, the often wind up squirting the liquid across the lab bench. For that reason, even though these are household materials, be sure students are wearing goggles. 
3. When I have a lot of time, I often ask students to share their data with me. I like to collect the averages for the class. The next day I will share the data with all my classes and see what they have to say about the numbers. It’s a really great lab for discussion because you can’t really argue with the data! 

You can purchase this lab activity in my TPT store. It’s also included in my full year chemistry lab manual! 

The post Penny Drop Lab: A Study of the Effects of Intermolecular Forces appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

Even though they’re simple, they’re not easy.  You can read more about how I use lab conclusions to get my students to utilize critical thinking.

All of these labs are available in my full year chemistry lab book. I spent years building and collecting all my lab activities together. In this post I’ll highlight 15 of my favorites. When the labs are available on their own, I will link them. 

Accuracy of Lab Equipment

For this lab, you’ll only need beakers, flasks and graduated cylinders. Not bad for a “chemical free lab.”  In this lab, students fill the beakers and flasks to the first graduation. Then they pour that water into the graduated cylinder. They’ll compare the experimental measurement (beakers and flasks) to the actual amount (graduated cylinders). While it’s not a fun lab, it’s great for an introduction to the lab supplies and percent error calculations. It’s honestly one of my favorites to start out the year. Amazing for setting expectations in the lab too!

Atomic Candies

I’ve written a whole post on this, so I want to keep this short. After your students learn the models of the atom, they can do this lab activity. They first point out three major features of each model of the atom: Dalton, Thomson, Rutherford, Bohr and Wave-Mechanical Model. Students are given five different treats: a Blow Pop, a gumball, a Gobstopper, a chocolate chip cookie and a marshmallow. Then they compare them to five different models of the atom. This is one of my favorite labs because it helps the students to really understand how the models of the atom are different from each other. 

Apparently Gobstoppers are hard to find now. A good alternative is the Airheads Extremes since, like Gobstoppers, they have colorful layers.

Rutherford’s Gold Foil

I also have a blog post on this low maintenance chemistry lab – it’s one of my favorites.  In this lab, students are going to simulate Rutherford’s Gold Foil Experiment. You’ll need to have the model made, which is a hula hoop, a string and a ball suspended in the middle. I like to use a styrofoam ball because it’s a lot easier to suspend in the middle of the hula hoop, but you can use anything. 

Now this next part is optional. I have my students throw ping pong balls at the model, which represents the alpha particles. I like ping pong balls because the kids can’t really hurt each other if somebody gets bonked by one. Balls of paper will work just as well. 

The point here is that when the “alpha particles” are thrown at the hula hoop, most of them will go straight through the “atom.”  Some will “deflect” meaning they hit the hula hoop, and others will “bounce back” when they hit the “nucleus.”  The smaller your “nucleus” is the closer to accurate your data will be, but I like to mess it up on purpose. It leads to a great discussion on how good our models actually are. 

All my Labs on Periodic Table

Graphing trends is SO BORING – but if you really wanted, you could do that. 

We have a lab where some students place some anonymous elements into a periodic table based on trends they find in properties, just like Mendeleev. 

Then of course, is periodic table color coding!

I have a PT Battleship lab which is a lot of fun. You have “boats” that need to be placed on the periodic table, and students use groups and periods to guess where the other has placed their boats. It’s a good way to have them intently look over the periodic table and become more familiar with it. But I’ll be honest, that’s one that’s better for the day before a school break, where you just need to have some fun. 

Last of the low maintenance periodic table labs is my Periodic Table Guessing Game, which you can get for free! Students have to pick an element and their partner will ask yes or no questions until they guess correctly. The lab has prompts like “does your element have a low ionization energy?”

Paperclip Formulas

For this low maintenance chemistry lab, students will need three types of paperclips. I usually do small, large and colored. They have specific chemical formulas they need to make with the paperclips that will simulate ionic bonding. This is one of my favorite labs, because it’s super easy to set up, the materials last forever and the 3D model kits don’t work for ionic bonding. 

Penny Drop

Students are going to test the strength of intermolecular forces by building up a drop of water on the surface of a penny. I usually like to use water, rubbing alcohol and some kind of oil. The oil is great because it helps to teach that sometimes big molecules get tangled and look like they have strong IMFs. You could also do this with tap water, distilled water, salt water, soapy water… the list goes on and on. Just make sure to do a trial run before releasing your students so you know what to expect!

Bubble Gum Hydrates

When I had an art classroom instead of a chemistry lab, when we were learning about hydrates and percent composition we didn’t have a way to do a dehydration. Instead, we used bubble gum.  The gum before it’s chewed represents the hydrate and sugar is the water. So when it’s chewed up it’s “dehydrated.” The gum wrapper acts as the crucible. The lab is set up so the students do the exact same math procedures they would do for something like copper II sulfate pentahydrate. Only difference is, no color change when totally “dehydrated.” But there is a massive change in flavor if you’re using the right brand of gum!

Gram and Mole Conversions

There’s not really a great lab that focuses on just the gram and mole conversion skill. Well until now! This is a skill your chemistry students will need! But you can’t always get that skill in with regular practice in the lab. So instead in this lab, students are doing very little bench-wise.  They are filling a beaker with water and removing a “sip” to determine the number of moles of water in a sip. Same for the amount of chalk or crayon it takes to write their name! It’s primary focus is on the math skills, and the materials are VERY simple. A perfect low maintenance chemistry lab!

Factors that Affect Solubility

What grinds my gears is when a chemistry teacher uses a CHEMICAL reaction to teach dissolving rates! (Like, it actually makes my blood boil!) In this lab, your students dissolve SUGAR in four mini experiments: temperature, surface area, concentration and agitation. They will determine the conditions under which solids dissolve best in a solvent. You’ll need some sugar cubes for the surface area experiment. I can usually find them on the bottom shelf of the grocery store. You could theoretically use any soluble salt though!

Collision Theory

Collision Theory is similar to factors that affect solubility, but it’s important to distinguish dissolving from chemical reactions. In this lab, students crack glow sticks under different conditions. Because there’s an actual chemical reaction taking place, it’s a better fit for collision theory. This requires water baths (warm and cold) and three glow sticks. Two of the same size (usually bracelets) and one larger one (the pendant works well). They compare concentration (size), shaking vs. not shaking and temperature. Plus you can’t have a reaction until your reactants meet – the cracking noise is REALLY great for getting this point across!

Equilibrium Straws

I love this simple equilibrium lab. You’ll need two graduated cylinders, two straws (of different width) and water. One graduated cylinder holds all the water (at this point – reactants). Then the straw is inserted to the bottom of the graduated cylinder. Your student will press their thumb to the top of the straw and carry its contents to the other graduated cylinder. That’s the forward reaction yielding products. Take the volume in each cylinder. Now do the same for each cylinder at the same time. Pick up water and swap. Now you have a reverse reaction going as well, where products become reactants. When this is graphed, you’ll see the equilibrium curves! It’s super low maintenance and when you have pairs of students, they like to battle or make it a competition for highest concentration. The funny thing is that depending on the width of the straws chosen by the student, some forwards and some reverse reaction students will win! It’s a lot of fun. 

Half life of a Skittle

For the final low maintenance chemistry lab, is the half life of a skittle. In this lab,  you need anything that has two distinguishable sides: skittles, coins, counters – you name it. You put them in a container and shake them for some amount of time. That’s the half life. Then you spill them out. Roughly half of them will be face up and half face down. If face up is “radioactive” and face down is “stable” you can count and graph the data. And you’ll get a decay curve! If you choose candy, I’d let your students eat it. It’s only fair!

The post 15 Low Maintenance Chemistry Labs that Teach Big Concepts appeared first on Kelsey Reavy.

So teaching chemistry was really tough… And knowing that I had over 150 kids to teach and that they were going to be taking a state final exam, I made it happen.  Instead of relying on the lab procedure for rigor, I more so relied on the quality of their writing.

Here’s my primary example.  Of course there were no Bunsen burners or supplies.  When I was teaching hydrates, I would have liked to have done a dehydration of copper (II) sulfate pentahydrate. It’s great because while it’s dehydrating, you also get a color change (which helps the newbie chemists to understand what’s going on). Since that was off the table, we instead used bubble gum.

The kids chewed the gum to remove sugar, taking the mass before and after. They do the EXACT SAME calculations! They even do a percent error analysis using the nutritional facts on the bubble gum package.  And seriously, I love this lab for the in depth (not so easy) error analysis!

As those years went on, I found more and more ways to get around not having a lab. And when I changed schools and I actually did have all the materials I needed, I CONTINUED to use these “chemical free” lab activities. Why? Well, they’re really great!

So great that I’ve put them all together and listed 41 labs in a book available for purchase as a full year chemistry lab book.

There’s 41 lab activities

Yes! That’s right, there’s 41 lab activities in this full year chemistry lab book. Considering most high schools run about 36 weeks out of the year, this is pretty good.  You can skip five labs that you just don’t vibe with and STILL do one a week!

There’s a least one lab activity for each of my fifteen units in my chemistry course.  Not sure what the 15 units are? Check out this free chemistry curriculum outline.  The more meaty units, like measurement, atomic theory and periodic table have more labs than redox.  But there’s at least one for each!

They are mostly “chemical free”

Like I said, I wrote most of these before I had a real chemistry lab. So even though we all know that EVERYTHING is a chemical, these labs are pretty close to chemical free.  I mean, you could even call this a kitchen chemistry lab book because most of these could be done in your own kitchen! Instead of using universal indicator (which is pretty toxic and definitely flammable) the book calls for cabbage juice as an acid base indicator. And I’ll tell you, it’s one of my favorites. 

The chemicals that you will need are kind of your everyday chemicals – nothing fancy.  And the lab book requires very small quantities of the chemicals. A $3 bottle of vinegar lasted me about three years. This should be something that YOUR SCHOOL can easily purchase for you.  Most schools have some type of budget that you can spend.  You’ll probably have to fill out an obscene amount of paperwork, but you can get it paid for.  Just make sure to check the reimbursement rule BEFORE you spend your own money. (Unless you’re willing to part with it – been there, done that.) This does leave the bulk of whatever budget you do have for cooler and more expensive things. Like a centrifuge, or distillation set up *heart eyes.*

It’s rigorous

Every administrator’s favorite word… But for real, this lab book requires a lot of in depth writing and explaining for EVERY lab. Every single lab is going to require the students to write a conclusion paragraph.  In it, they’ll explain what they did, how the did it, why they did it, how it turned out and what they’d do differently next time. Many of the labs have some post-lab questions to help them to get in the mindset to write these conclusions. 

It’s got a great writing resource

When I was relying on the rigor of the writing to teach my students, I had to make sure they were writing like scientists. I developed a document, How To Write a Chemistry Lab Report to help the kids write well.  It outlines what each section of a lab report should look like and where it should go. But the best part is that it has SENTENCE STARTERS.  I know that sounds pretty juvenile for chemistry students… but writing scientifically is so different from writing in English or history class.  “Rigor” means it’s a brain workout. Not that it’s difficult. There’s a teeny weenie difference. 

You can differentiate

Have kids that need some help? Assign JUST post-lab questions instead of the whole conclusion.  Allow them to write conclusions in small groups.  Or give them the “conclusion form.”  It’s effectively the same as the sentence starters for the conclusion paragraph with one difference.  It has the kids write as if they were answering questions.  It’s a much smaller task to answer 8 question than to write an 8 sentence paragraph.  The baby steps are what helps.  Plus you can trim a few of those prompts to shorten the task if needed. 

You can bind it as a book or print individually

There’s a document of numbered pages for book people.  My high school chemistry teacher printed a class set of her full year chemistry lab books, and we wrote in composition books.  I prefer to print out the unnumbered pages and have students write directly on that.  For help on deciding what works best for you, read this post. 

There’s multiple covers

This one might be a little silly – maybe not. Depends on your level of *extra.*  There’s six different covers so you can print covers for different classes.  This can help you to sort them easily for grading, or storing them in your classroom. 

There’s an answer key

This one is sort of obvious.  Perhaps not… I will be honest, there are a few answers that read “answers will vary.” But I’ve either ripped a conclusion from one of my students or wrote one myself.  For each lab! You can show an exemplar to your students to help the solidify chemistry concepts or increase the depth of their writing. 

Google Sheets calculators

About half the labs include some kind of calculation. I know that you know what the right answers should be. If you’re anything like me, you’d say “that’s close enough” or “that’s off because of a rounding error.” But without checking it, you can’t REALLY know. So I’ve made a Google sheet that does all the calculations for you for any lab that will require math. 

Where to Get it

This lab book is available for purchase in my Teaches Pay Teachers store or on my website. You can find the full table of contents there, along with the full list of materials you’d need for the lab book. Be sure to download the preview file because you can get a lab for free! Yes, my periodic table guessing game is included for free in the preview file! Finally, there are plenty of labs available on their own if you just need some specific things, or just want to give the full year chemistry lab book a trial run.

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