MICROCHEMUK
The Online International Symposium on Microscale Chemistry
and RSC SaFE meeting 13th, 14th and possibly 15th July 2021
I am pleased to say that this event has the support of the Royal Society of Chemistry Secondary and Education Group (SaFE). In fact, on the first day, the symposium and SaFE will run together. This will provide UK teachers with a unique opportunity to meet some the most talented exponents in microscale and reduced scale chemistry in the world.
But we have to go online as travelling to the UK will not be easy for our overseas guests and our teachers may well be working up to the last minute. There are so many unknowns (and unknown unknowns). More details will come and you are encouraged to go to the website. 
It also has the support of CLEAPSS
The sympsoium has previously has been held in various places in the world on a biennial basis. I joined the events in Kuwait, on the suggestion of Dr Stephen Breuer, who had invented a scheme of organic chemistry for Universities and Schools in England. In trepidation I went to Kuwait but was immediately made to feel at home with teachers and researchers in tertiary education and teachers from high schools. Since then, I have been to Berlin, Mexico City, Senda (Japan) and Johannesburg. |
Click here
for more details |
The activities which are described in this website are designed to add variety to practical work in schools, not to replace the traditional methods. They also offer something extra such as better classroom control, increased safety, quicker procedures and the underpinning of the essential concepts required to improve the understanding of chemical changes at the atomic level; interpreting the visible with the invisible. They also carry a strong green message. The Video below descibes some of the activities.
Publication in the Jounal of Chemical Education
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Thank you to Bruce Mattson, Eric Villa and Jess Gunn in forging ahead finally achieving publication in the Journal of Chemical Eduacation
J. Chem. Educ., 2019, 96 (5), pp 951–954 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00563 There is also a discussion on this on https://microchemuk.weebly.com/2-blog-is-this-supposed-to-happen/visualising-how-chemistry-works |
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"I was so focussed and drawn into the chemistry I was observing"
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"Chemistry demos that are bigger on the inside than the outside"
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"In a little, you can see a lot"
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I cannot praise and thank too highly the work of the CLEAPSS senior technician, Mary Owen BSc, who has designed equipment based on my original ideas and suggestions and also Kay Stephenson FRSC, who also works at CLEAPSS and supplies me with problems to solve and designs many of the worksheets. David Paterson has now contributed with integrated instruction sheets which are disgned to reduce loasd on the short term woking memory.
The work of Professor Bruce Mattson at Creighton University (http://tinyurl.com/kwayszd) and John Bradley (http://tinyurl.com/lvny94y) in South Africa was a source of inspiration to me in this field. I have since used contacts from all over the world to improve microscale chemistry for use in UK schools.
I am pleased to say that they are now being included in UK Examination exemplar experiments for assing skills.
I have written for Royal Chemical Society’ Education in Chemistry journal[i], the Association for Science Education[ii] and the Journal of Chemical Education [iii]
[i] http://www.rsc.org/education/eic/issues/2012May/microscale-chemistry-revisited.asp
[ii] School Science Review, Association for Science Education, March 2011, 92(340)
[iii] Visualizing Dissolution, Ion Mobility, and Precipitation through a Low-Cost, Rapid-Reaction Activity Introducing Microscale Precipitation Chemistry