Parenting

Helping More Children Enjoy Exploring Chemistry

Posted: 1/7/2012

You and your kids can have fun learning chemistry—and about its important role in everyday life.

(NAPSI)—The next time you enjoy a good meal, good health or a good time, chances are you can thank a chemist. This vital science plays an important part in nutrition, medicine and just about everything around you.

One way to show your gratitude may be to encourage kids to appreciate how much fun chemistry can be. To help, the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, has come up with a couple of clever publications.

One, ChemMatters, is a magazine for high school students and it’s available at www.acs.org/chemmatters.

The other, Chemistry: Our Health, Our Future, is a newspaper for elementary school students available at www.acs.org/ncw, featuring many hands-on activities that highlight:

• Why eating well and staying active is important at any age;

• How medicines are created and how they work in your body;

• Why washing your hands properly is so important and how it can help you and others around you stay healthy.

This website also features fun and simple experiments children can do at home or in the classroom, including measuring how much sugar is in soda. Here’s how:

Sweet Measurements

Materials:

1 empty soda bottle or can with a “Nutrition Facts” label (8 or 12 oz., not diet soda)

1 kitchen or postal balance with a gram scale

1 box of sugar cubes or sugar packets

Tongs

Procedure:

Read the “Nutrition Facts” label on the soda bottle to see the number of servings in the bottle and how many grams (g) of sugar are in each serving. Put the balance on a sturdy table or desk. Use the tongs to add sugar cubes or packets to the weighing pan of the balance one by one. Watch the scale on the balance and keep adding sugar cubes until the reading on the balance is equal to the number of grams of sugar in one serving of soda. You’ll see just how much sugar is in each glass of soda you drink.

Learn More

For more information about chemistry, free resources and other activities, visit www.acs.org/ncw or call (800) 227-5558.

Note to Editors: While National Chemistry Week this year is October 16 to 22, this article can be useful to your readers at any time.