Tuesday, November 12, 2002

Baking Soda, Vinegar, and Measuring Cups Become Lab Materials for Online Chemistry Course By DAN CARNEVALE Two science professors have cooked up a way for distance-education students to fulfill their science-lab requirements -- by turning their kitchens into chemistry labs. The professors say their approach, currently being fine-tuned, can help provide online students with laboratory courses, which are often required for undergraduate degrees. Instead of using test tubes and beakers, the students make do with measuring cups and saucepans. The professors say the students come out with an understanding of introductory chemistry comparable to that of their on-campus peers. Doris R. Kimbrough, an associate chemistry professor at the University of Colorado at Denver, and Jimmy Reeves, an associate professor of chemistry at the University North Carolina at Wilmington, developed the course. "Virtually all basic-studies programs require a lab science," Mr. Reeves says. "The problem with doing a lab-science course online is, of course, How do you do the lab?" The course was financed by a four-year, $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education. This is the third year that the professors have been offering the online chemistry lab. So far, nobody's house has blown up or burned down. "All my students still have all their fingers and toes," Ms. Kimbrough says. "It's going well." The professors say the experiments are safe, and that most of them use items found in a typical household kitchen, such as milk, nuts, vinegar, baking soda, and matches. Students need to get a quality scale, which they can buy online for about $40. But the rest of the material can be purchased from the local grocery store or a Wal-Mart. At the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, the course is offered entirely online to first-semester science majors, who enroll in the course through nearby Cape Fear Community College. Students can seek help on the Cape Fear campus if they have trouble following the instructions for the labs. At the University of Colorado at Denver, meanwhile, the home-laboratory course is offered to non-science majors. Students attend the course's lectures in a traditional classroom but conduct the lab experiments in their kitchens. Ms. Kimbrough wants to keep a portion of the course face-to-face while the bugs are being worked out in preparation for converting the entire course to an online format in the future, possibly this coming summer. The precaution proved necessary. The first time students tried to run the experiments at home, many of them became confused by the printed instructions. They sought help during the following lecture period. Ms. Kimbrough tries to keep the experiments simple and fun. "These are pretty science-phobic folks here," she says. In one experiment, the student sticks a pin into a nut, such as a walnut or pecan, and ignites the nut with a match. The oil in the nut begins to burn. The student heats water with the flame from the nut and measures the rise in the water's temperature. Then the student uses the temperature difference to calculate how many calories the nut contained. The results are usually not very accurate, Ms. Kimbrough says. The students will come up with calorie counts that are three to four points different from those offered on the nutrition label on the nuts' packaging, which is typically more precise. But the results in an on-campus chemistry lab are usually just as badly skewed, she says. "The experiment has some flaws," Ms. Kimbrough says. "You've got this charred form of former nut, but it probably has some combustibles left in it." Also, the flame is heating the air around it, in addition to the water. So students are instructed to figure out how to design a better experiment. She says the answers the students give are often creative, such as running the experiment in a high-oxygen environment or doing it on one of the space shuttles. Even though a lot of the suggestions "are not really realistic experiments," Ms. Kimbrough says, "it shows they're thinking about it." Ms. Kimbrough says students enjoy the mix of experiments they get to do. "We've gotten a lot of mileage out of baking soda and vinegar," she says. "It's a cute reaction because it gives off gas." In that experiment, students are asked to mix the two ingredients together and measure the weight loss as the chemicals react, giving off carbon dioxide. "You can actually see the weight loss on the balance as the chemical reaction takes place," Mr. Reeves says. While students have fun making smoke and fire, Mr. Reeves says, they are also learning at least as much as they would learn in an on-campus chemistry lab. Online students outperformed on-campus students on the final exams and on the in-lab practical exams that Mr. Reeves gave on the campus to some of the distance-education students to see how they stacked up against the campus students. Despite the success, Mr. Reeves says, he does not believe chemistry majors should take courses in the discipline online after their first semester. Students in advanced courses need to learn complex skills and how to use specialized equipment. "Those kinds of skills can't be taught outside the laboratory setting," he says. But the online course helps non-science majors and first-semester students get a taste of chemistry while working comfortably in their own kitchens. "It really gives them the sense that chemistry is not just something that happens in a chemistry lab -- that it goes on all the time," Ms. Kimbrough says. "And as a science teacher, that's pretty exciting." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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