When I first started teaching, I needed low maintenance labs for high school chemistry classes because I didn’t have a lab room. I was teaching out of an old art classroom. We had one sink, and one outlet. There were no chemicals (except a weird amount of epsom salt). We had a few electronic balances, but of course, no place to plug them in. Since there wasn’t much going on, we needed these simple labs.
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!
