from Erica Jacobsen, JCE High School Editor
A 4,000 mile round-trip in a car can get a little boring. When I was a child, summers typically included a drive from our home in Arizona to visit relatives scattered across Minnesota and Wisconsin. The license plate game was a favorite way to pass the time. We began […]

The dictionary definition of science begins something like this: The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of natural phenomena. Notice that all the nouns are derived from verbs: observe, identify, describe, investigate, and explain. This implies strongly that science is more a process than a body of knowledge. Only later do we find: […]

from Erica K. Jacobsen, JCE High School Editor
Hungry for Food Chemistry
I’m hungry. Can’t say that I remember the last time reading a magazine brought on an attack of the munchies, but the March issue of the Journal of Chemical Education got my mouth watering. A major reason for this was Miles and Bachman’s article (p […]

from Erica Jacobsen, JCE High School Editor
“When it rains, it pours.” The classic Morton Salt slogan pops into my head every once in awhile when I use the salt shaker. I appreciate the cleverness of taking the original meaning of the idiom, and exchanging it for the meaning that the salt doesn’t clump, even when […]

from Erica Jacobsen, JCE High School Editor
The WonderLab Museum in Bloomington, IN was alive with movement and sound. Limber bodies snaked up a two-story maze called the “Grapevine Climber” to arrive triumphantly at the top. Massive soap bubbles burst, showering heads with a misty spray. Cheers and applause broke out as the centerpiece of a […]

from Laura Slocum, JCE High School Associate Editor
New has been defined in various ways—recently made, created, or invented; recently discovered or noticed; recently introduced and previously unfamiliar; at the beginning of another day, month, or year. At this time of year most of us are probably thinking about this last definition of new. However, for […]

from Erica Jacobsen, JCE High School Editor
If you haven’t visited it before, chemistry.com (accessed Jun 2008) probably isn’t quite what you think. The Web site does focus on chemistry—of the matchmaking kind. The online dating service uses an algorithm created by Helen E. Fisher, an anthropologist who has studied the neural chemistry of people in […]

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, […]

Als Ik Kan is the message in the logo of Gustav Stickley, creator of the Mission style of furniture. Loosely translated from Flemish it means “to the best of my ability”. Jim D. Roach, Emporia State University, KS uses Als Ik Kan as the theme for his call for greater dedication by everyone, teachers, students, […]

from Erica Jacobsen, JCE High School Editor
“Coulda, woulda, shoulda” is a loop that often plays in my brain after a conference presentation. Why didn’t I… I could have… I should have… Even after extensive preparation, it’s easy to dwell on what you could have done differently so the presentation would have been even better. Maybe […]