How Can We Prevent Chemical Pollution and
Waste?
by Katie Larsen, Kristine
Calderon,
Loree Campbell
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TAPESTRY GRANT PROPOSAL Project Directors: Katie Larsen Kristine Calderon Loree Campbell Project Title: How Can We Prevent Chemical Pollution and Waste? Total Budget: $1885 PROPOSAL SUMMARY Chemistry labs in high school and college classrooms are a small but visible source of hazardous waste and pollution. In this project, students change the role of chemistry labs from being a source of hazardous chemicals and generators of waste, to a model of clean, safe and efficient chemistry practice. Faculty at schools and colleges may not have the resources or time to redesign their lab activities, so in this project high school chemistry students become the consultants that evaluate current lab activities at local schools and colleges and propose alternatives that meet the original pedagogical objectives and budgetary constraints of the client school. Students will present their findings to the client school, and success of the project will depend on the school’s acceptance of the students’ redesigned activities. To create a strong foundation for their consulting work, students look comprehensively at the links between chemistry and ecology through a series of lessons about habitats, effects of pollution on plants and develop their skills needed to assess labs, such as dimensional analysis and stoichiometry. The students’ work will help schools and colleges avoid the costs and safety problems associated with handling hazardous chemicals and waste. Though large industries
contribute the bulk of pollutants, toxics and other chemical waste,
effecting change in chemistry classrooms will raise the students’ and
community’s awareness of the potential changes that could occur in the
chemical industry that can greatly improve the public’s health. DESCRIPTION The “How Can We Prevent Chemical Pollution and Waste?” project challenges students to use their knowledge of dimensional analysis, stoichiometry, solvents, acids and bases, ecology and impacts of pollution to critically evaluate a lab activity from a general chemistry lab from a local school or college. The goal is to have students recognize where improvements can be made in an experiment that would reduce or eliminate waste (pollution), prevent use of hazardous materials, and use resources more efficiently. Those objectives are commonly referred to as the green chemistry principles.[1] Students then serve as advisors by developing improvements to the experiment or developing an alternative experiment that still conveys the same concepts as the original experiment and complies with the green chemistry principles. This investigation serves as an end of the year “capstone” project for students to apply their newly acquired knowledge and skills to solve a real chemistry problem in the community. In order to address chemical
pollution from a green chemistry perspective, students will be involved
in several lab activities that connect ecology with chemistry over the
course of four and a half weeks. The ecological activities consist of a
lab and internet research aimed at helping them discover how pollution
affects plant life in Barton Creek, a popular creek in After students develop an understanding of the impacts of pollution, the chemistry lessons develop the students’ skills needed to assess lab activities’ impact on the environment. The chemistry lessons consist of three benchmark activities and three laboratory activities. The benchmark lessons include coverage of dimensional analysis, stoichiometry, and acid and base chemistry. In these activities, students will learn how to determine the numerical value and the units of variables in an equation, use stoichiometry to calculate masses, moles, and percents within a chemical equation, and learn basic properties of acids and bases. These benchmark activities will be actively utilized in the laboratory lessons. The laboratory lessons consist of a lab where students create ethanol from molasses (to show that solvents don’t have to be petroleum-based), a water quality lab (to show the impacts of chemicals on water bodies), and a lab that explores and investigates how green a chemistry lab can be (to get students involved in identifying improvements to labs). In addition to the ecology and chemistry lessons, the students will also gain insight into the changes some consumer products industries are making to prevent the use and generation of hazardous waste from ”show and tell” type presentations where teachers present “green” consumer products. The effects of pollution on general health and well-being will also be discussed with students with a guest public health speaker. All together, students will combine knowledge gained from both the ecological and chemical activities together to gain insight as to how green chemistry can be used as a preventative measure to pollution. Faculty from the University of Texas at Austin, Austin Community College, Huston-Tillotson College, St. Edward’s and Concordia University have expressed interest in working with the high school students to design lab activities with a negligible or smaller impact on the environment. RATIONALE In POTENTIAL
IMPACT The reduction of hazardous chemicals and waste resulting from the student redesigned lab activities may be small in relation to the other chemical waste generated in Travis County, but their work will also raise awareness and inspire faculty, students, their parents and others in the community to reconsider the necessity of waste and pollution. Thus, the goals of this project extend beyond reducing chemical lab waste in the classroom. The major goal of the project is to have students create a report for a local school or college that recommends changes to one or more chemistry lab activities to reduce the chemicals used and waste generated. About 60 students from the high school, working in groups of three, will participate in this effort. Their work will result in creating at least 20 redesigned chemistry lab activities, with the reduction in chemicals used and waste generated varying depending on the students’ selections. At least two teachers and 100 students from other schools or colleges will benefit from the students’ redesign work. If the students’ redesigned activities replace old ones, the administration and budget of the other schools will also be positively impacted. Students benefit from synthesizing their knowledge and skills gained in chemistry class to reduce a school’s impact on the environment. By allowing students to evaluate lab activities at the college, and not just high school level, the project will familiarize students with college-level curriculum and thus increase their confidence in taking college coursework. This augments the project goal of having students realize their worth as effective citizens in making positive changes. EVALUATION PLANThe primary mechanism for measuring this project’s success is to assess the student’s engagement and learning throughout all activities. First, the students will be assessed for the accuracy and successful completion of a consultation of a local school’s labs. Students will give a presentation of their findings and suggestions to the faculty and students of the respective school. The success of this endeavor could be assessed by the school’s adoption of the proposed changes and also by the quality of work of the student regardless of the response. Along with presentations to schools, the student’s learning will be assessed using the assessment tool of a student-designed concept map that requires the students to develop connections between all major concepts. This allows for a better understanding of the overall picture of the science and community involved. The final assessment of student’s success will be a portfolio of material collected throughout the course of this project and a final presentation given to selected faculty and public. The students, parents, faculty and the affected community will also assess the success of the project at all presentation events. Voluntary feedback will be collected from attendees and used to evaluate and improve this project. The questionnaire will include opinion questions about how beneficial the presentation and reports were and what could be improved. The evaluation of this project will be used to continuously improve this project for the future. PROJECT
CALENDAR Attached. BUDGET The project budget below is cost effective because the project utilizes to the greatest extent possible the resources already available at the school. The requested items to be covered by the Tapestry grant are for items not normally stocked in a chemistry classroom. In addition, because this project complies with the green chemistry principle of not using hazardous waste or generating hazardous waste, there are no disposal costs or expensive chemicals.
Items Provided by the High School:
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