Voil! C'est La Magie De La Chimie

Pamela Jackson                 Horace Mann School
                               8050 South Chappel Avenue
                               Chicago IL 60617
                               312-535-6640

Objectives:

These activities are designed for fifth-eighth grade students in order to:
1.  titillate, motivate, activate, and captivate students' interests in 
    learning more about chemistry.
2.  to bridge the scientific with the pragmatic.
3.  to show the relevancy of chemistry to their everyday world
4.  to ring in parents as partners as a contributory factor, endemic to their
    child's academic success.  

Materials:

125-mL Ehrlenmeyer flask         apple juice
buret clamped in a ring stand    orange juice
1% starch solution, aqueous      tomato juice
iodine solution*                 sodium bicarbonate
vitamin C solution (dissolve     white paper
    a vitamin C pill in water)   hot plate

*The iodine solution is made by dissolving 0.6 g KI in 500 mL H2O and 0.6 g 
Iodine crystals dissolved in ethanol. These are mixed together and filled with 
H2O to 1000 mL.

Strategies:

1.   Fill your buret to the 50-mL mark with your iodine solution
2.   Dissolve a 50 mg vitamin C pill in 100 mL of water.  Carefully measure 25mL 
     of prepared vitamin C solution into a clean Ehrlenmeyer flask.  Add ten 
     drops of a 1% starch solution to the vitamin solution. 
3.   Place your white paper under the buret.  Slowly add the iodine solution to 
     the vitamin solution until one drop of iodine causes the vitamin C solution 
     to turn blue-black.  This is the end point of the solution.  Record the 
     volume of iodine used in the data table. 
4.   Gently boil 25 mL of orange juice for one minute.  Repeat step 3 with the 
     boiled juice. 
5.   Add 1 gram of sodium bicarbonate to 25 mL of fresh orange juice.  Repeat 
     step 3. 
6.   Repeat step 3 with 25 mL of fresh tomato juice.
7.   Repeat step 3 with 25 mL of fresh apple juice.

Performance Assessment:

     Shafequa, Carlos, and Dominique have been summoned to a remote island in 
the Pacific.  Armed with the latest technological advances and the 
scintillating, phenomenological expertise gleamed from the Chicago S.M.I.L.E. 
Program, their mission is to establish healthy eating patterns and to avert the 
expected rampages of scurvy ravishing the neighboring villages.  The village 
chief espouses to be in possession of three panaceas, but is unable to test for 
vitamin C.  It is cost effective to only market the cure-all with the highest 
concentration of vitamin C.  Mes etudiants you are to devise a methodology 
consistent with the experiments you just finished.  You have the equipment and 
the knowledge.  Bon la chance! 

Scoring Rubric For Assessing Vitamin C:

Demonstrated Competency
Exemplary Response....... Rating = 4
Gives a complete response with a concise, succinct, elegant explanation;
includes a clear data chart; communicates effectively to the audience;
demonstrates understanding of the theoretical as well as the empirical
processes; is familiar with the appropriate nomenclature and cites
relevant examples endemic to a milticultural setting.
Excellent Response........Rating = 3
Gives a reasonable complete response with lucid explanations; includes
a data chart; communicates relatively effective to the audience; demonstrates
understanding of scientific ideas and processes; delineates the importance of
multicultural experiences.
Satisfactory Response......Rating = 2
Articulates a theoretical premise, but cites few pragmatic examples; does not 
reference multicultural experiences.
Inadequate Response........Rating = 1
Theoretical basis is tenuous; no hands-on experiments are provided; no attempt
is made for inclusivity and diversity in a multicultural setting.
No Attempt        .........Rating = 0