This is why being a chemistry teacher will turn your hair white.
Instructions are written out, I’ve modeled every step, “please read the entire lab first and make sure you understand every step before you start.”
But now one group is filling a beaker with indicator and another is fucking up their data beyond recognition because they forgot you have to tare the scale (which you already explained and modeled to that group personally, because they do this every time).
When you chose lab activities/materials, the consideration is “in what ways could the most determined teenager hurt themselves or others?” Kids will drink chemicals, spill them on themselves, and mix them at random. At least one group per period will fuck up any given lab beyond all recognition, in shocking and new creative ways.
It’s why so much is done with baking soda and vinegar. I can hit pretty much every standard and concept with those two and some alka seltzer tablets, and I can’t think of a way that a teenager could kill themselves with those things.
This is why being a chemistry teacher will turn your hair white.
Instructions are written out, I’ve modeled every step, “please read the entire lab first and make sure you understand every step before you start.”
But now one group is filling a beaker with indicator and another is fucking up their data beyond recognition because they forgot you have to tare the scale (which you already explained and modeled to that group personally, because they do this every time).
When you chose lab activities/materials, the consideration is “in what ways could the most determined teenager hurt themselves or others?” Kids will drink chemicals, spill them on themselves, and mix them at random. At least one group per period will fuck up any given lab beyond all recognition, in shocking and new creative ways.
It’s why so much is done with baking soda and vinegar. I can hit pretty much every standard and concept with those two and some alka seltzer tablets, and I can’t think of a way that a teenager could kill themselves with those things.