So, how is it done? Part 1

July 3, 2013

Hello to all you Chemistry teachers out there. ‘R’ day is nearly with us (in the Northern Hemisphere or May session schools anyway)  Good luck with your results …. I hope your students performances are in line with what you were expecting. If you are...

Activated Carbon

October 24, 2012

I thought I would write a quick post about activated carbon. I was using it the other day. Heating it on a deflagrating spoon and plunging it in oxygen to make (more) carbon dioxide. As I was heating it, I noticed a couple of interesting things …. (1) It looked...

Mining Helium

October 23, 2012

My last post was on Helium and as promised this one would focus on how Helium is actually obtained. I was really surprised to find out that Helium is actually mined and not extracted directly from the air. The reason why it is mined is because it is found in far...

Goodbye to party ballons?

October 17, 2012

The following article caught my eye a few weeks ago: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19676639 It deals with the call of an eminent scientist who is asking for the sale of Helium balloons to be banned as there is a shortage of the gas for instruments such as MRI scanners....

Objective 3 Command Terms

October 16, 2012

I think it is worth noting that objective 3 is not tested in paper 1 (either at SL or HL). It does, however, form 50% of the questions for paper 2 and 3 (the other 50% of the questions come from objective 1 & 2). Unsurprisingly, there are many objective 3 command...

Command Terms (2)

October 12, 2012

The command terms for objective two get a little trickier. They are summarised as: Annotate, apply, calculate, describe, distinguish, estimate, identify and outline. There are some that speak for themselves (eg, calculate) where as other need more of an explanation....