1394 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 74 No. 12 December 1997

Chemical Education Today

News from Onlineby Carolyn Sweeney Judd

Missed Opportunities? Don’t miss another one! Seehttp://www.ocean98.org/ for the United Nations site Ocean1998, celebrating 1998 as the International Year of theOcean. Educational programs are part of Ocean98 http://www.ocean98.org/hfst5.html. Your students can read “TheEffects of Sodium Cyanide on Coral Reefs and Marine Fishin the Philippines”, by Peter J. Rubec, http://www.actwin.com/fish/ima/cyanide.html. Originally pub-lished in 1986, this fascinating paper describes the far-reaching effects of the use of cyanide for the collection oftropical fish for aquariums.

Surf over to another international site, The GLOBEProgram http://www.globe.gov/. GLOBE stands for “Glo-bal Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment”and involves K–12 students, scientists, and teachers from55 countries and 4,000 schools. GLOBE’s U.S. team includesNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA,NSF, EPA, and the Departments of Education and State,working together with more than 25 state and local part-ner organizations. I am impressed with the interagency co-operation.

I am also impressed with the quality of the proceduresGLOBE gives the students. The Hydrology/ Water Chemis-try Studies section http://globe.fsl.noaa.gov/edu/exp/sw/sw1.html gives clear directions to students about data collec-tion. Measuring Surface Water Temperature is also illustratedhttp://globe.fsl.noaa.gov/edu/exp/sw/gif/swtherm2.gif.Illustrations accompany descriptions of pH measurementsof water with indicator paper http://globe.fsl.noaa.gov/edu/

exp/sw/gif/phindic2.gif andwith a pH Pen http://globe.fsl.noaa.gov/edu/exp/sw/gif/phpen2.gif.

Go to GLOBE Visualiza-tions http://globe.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/home.cgi to see thesurface-water temperature mea-surements from schools through-out the world on October 12,1996. Or you can choose the pHof surface water in Europe onwhatever date you choose.Surely our students will learnthat the benefit of gatheringdata is the combination andanalysis of that data to see thebig picture.

Before you dismiss TheGLOBE Program because itseems to be for younger stu-dents, read what one of the par-ticipating scientists, RogerBales, Hydrology Scientist atThe University of Arizonawrites to the GLOBE studentshttp://globe.fsl .noaa.gov/scicorn/bales.html: “I teachclasses in water chemistry andin global biogeochemistry. Eachyear I also teach University ofArizona students to do the samewater quality analyses that youare doing under the GLOBEProgram.”

Young people do not wantjust to be told that things arebad—they want to be able tohelp make things better. Givethem some tools. Go to the Uni-versity of Wisconsin–Environmental Resources Center site,Give Water a Hand http://www.uwex.edu/erc/, a programfor young people taking action in their community. Here youcan download two free guides for beginning a water com-munity service project in your area. Also you can contact aGive Water a Hand representative in your state by select-ing your state from http://www.uwex.edu/erc/map/states.htm. As a special bonus, you have access to a greatUSA map.

Perhaps some of your students want to trace ground-water contamination by herbicides as part of a water commu-nity service project. Did you know that alachlor is 2-chloro-N-(2,6-diethylphenyl)-N-(methoxymethyl)acetamide? I got thisinformation from the Herbicide Name List http//ianrwww.unl.edu/ianr/pat/herblist.htm. This collection of common

ChemTeam Classic Papers: http://dbhs.wvusd.k12.ca.us/Chem-History/Classic-Papers-Menu.html

Classic Chemistry Page by Carmen Giunta from LeMoyne College: http://maple.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/index.html

Give Water a Hand from U. of Wisconsin–Environ-mental Resources Center: http://www.uwex.edu/erc/

The GLOBE Program: http://www.globe.gov/

Herbicide Name List: http://ianrwww.unl.edu/ianr/pat/herblist.htm

Steve Lower’s home page at Simon Fraser Univer-sity: http://www.sfu.ca/chemcai/

Ocean 1998, a United Nations site: http://www.ocean98.org/

Pesticide Education Resources at University of Ne-braska-Lincoln: http://ianrwww.unl.edu/ianr/pat/ephome.htm

Reports from Other Journals

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Vol. 74 No. 12 December 1997 • Journal of Chemical Education 1395

Chemical Education Today

and chemical names of herbicides approved by the WeedScience Society of America is part of the Pesticide Educa-tion Resources at University of Nebraska–Lincoln http://ianrwww.unl.edu/ianr/pat/ephome.htm.

Surely all this concern about the quality of our waterwill lead to discussions about the nature of water solutions.See Carmen Giunta’s Classic Chemistry Page from Le MoyneCollege http://maple.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/index.html forpapers on electrochemistry and electrolyte solutions http:/

Young people do not want just to be told that

things are bad—they want to be able to help make

things better. Give them some tools.

/maple.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/papers.html#elec, whichlinks to the ChemTeam site http://dbhs.wvusd. k12.ca.us/Chem-History/Classic-Papers-Menu.html. This Classic Pa-pers site is from John L. Park of Diamond Bar High School.Introduce your students to original papers by Arrhenius andBrønsted and more. By the way, I found my way to TheClassic Chemistry Page using my favorite search engine—going to a great home page. This time I started with thehome page of Steve Lower at Simon Fraser Universityhttp://www.sfu.ca/chemcai/.

Carolyn Sweeney Judd teaches at Houston CommunityCollege System, 1300 Holman, Houston, TX 77004; phone:713/718-6095; email: cjudd@tenet.edu.