from Laura Slocum, JCE High School Associate Editor
What could the three items in the title possibly have in common? For me, they represent three of the 24 different projects my students turned in February 14. In the July 2007 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education, Ami LeFevre shared her Element Project, Bouquets of Periodicity, […]

Everyone wants more for less. That’s human nature, but it’s not necessarily a good long-term strategy for human society, especially when there are unanticipated, unintended negative consequences. Everyone would like lower electric bills, for example, but most of us paying the lower bills will not have to pay the full costs of global warming, many […]

from Erica Jacobsen, JCE High School Editor
My young children are big fans of dot-to-dot puzzles. Each page doesn’t look like much to start—just a jumbled up mess of numbered dots. But if the dots are linked in the correct order, an appealing picture appears. Reading through the May 2008 issue of the Journal of Chemical […]

The National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine have just published a book, Science, Evolution, and Creationism that should be read by all scientists and teachers of science (1). An eight-page brochure summarizes the book and is an excellent way to stimulate and inform discussions of evolution, creationism, and “intelligent design”.
The brochure describes […]

The theme for this year’s Chemists Celebrate Earth Day is Water—Streaming Chemistry. As we do every February, the JCE editorial staff has collected a broad range of articles in support of that theme. We hope this issue, and others we have done in the past, are really useful for those who are planning Earth Day […]

from Erica K. Jacobsen, JCE High School Editor
The unofficial Marine Corps motto that is the title of this column was brought into popular culture by the gravelly voice of Clint Eastwood in the 1980s film “Heartbreak Ridge”. I don’t claim to have anywhere near the constitution or character of a Marine, but the motto has […]

from Erica K. Jacobsen, JCE High School Editor
A family friend designs, builds, and sells furniture made from used wine barrel staves. His journey of developing production methods over the past couple of years has led him into new territory. He’s played a bit of the chemist, experimenting with the use and resulting look of various […]

All of us can learn a lot when a very effective teacher communicates about teaching. An example is an interview with Eleanor Siegrist, this year’s winner of the James Bryant Conant Award in High School Chemistry Teaching, that begins on p 1408. Reading Siegrist’s answers to the Journal’s questions led me to think further about […]

It is easy to find fault with political discourse in the
United States. The number of complaints that our system is broken, in proportion to the total population, is about the same as the number of complaints that our chemical education system is broken, in proportion to the number of chemical educators. But neither system shows […]