Middle School Physical Science

Middle School Physical Science Resource Center... 

Science continues to be an area of high interest in pre-adolescents and adolescents alike, especially when you add plenty of hands-on activities and labs that your middle school child is both mentally and physically prepared to enjoy. In so many cases, the world around you can be your science textbook. Middle school science encourages exploration and the middle school child is often an eager explorer. 

Abbreviations used MS is middle school, HS is high school, UGN is undergraduate nonscience major, UGS is undergraduate science major, AIB is Aromatic Infrared Bands. GC is General Chemistry, OC is Organic Chemistry, PC is Physical Chemistry, 10 is Inorganic Chemistry, lA is Instrumental Analysis, AC is Analytical Chemistry. 

To improve the science backgrounds of practicing middle school teachers a program was run jointly by the Departments of Chemistry and Physics at WSU in the summer of 1989. Financed through the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction the program. Explorations in Middle School Science, was attended by 27 fifth- through ninth-grade teachers. The first two weeks were devoted to physics concepts, both lecture and laboratory, and the latter two weeks were spent on elementary chemistry. Wherever possible simple equipment and materials that could be found in local hardware stores or supermarkets were used. Detailed notes of all lectures and illustrated writeups of the experiments were provided to the participants in the hope that the teachers would use some of the activities as demonstrations, or possibly as student activities, in their classrooms. 

Why do students lose interest in math and science in the middle school years Some blame teacher quality and preparation. That may be a factor however, I believe it is primarily because curriculum content is disconnected from the content of the students daily lives and interests. In elementary school years, students love science because they learn about rocks, bugs, dinosaurs, and rain forests. These topics are exciting in elementary school, but quickly lose their appeal as the students reach puberty. In middle school, science begins to become more abstract, rocks become earth science, bugs become life science, and physical science deals with forces, energy, and other things that are invisible to students. These natural world topics are not so natural for children that live in inner-city, urban environments with few opportunities to travel and enjoy the natural world. 

The physical properties of metals that lead to their widespread use in countless designs can readily be listed. %u are probably familiar with the basic properties of metals from science classes dating back at least to middle school. Metals are malleable, meaning they can be formed into useful shapes or foils. They are ductile, meaning they can be pulled into wires. Metals are good conductors of... 

The technical level depends on the audience which tanged fiom middle school students to upper level undergraduate chemistiy majors in a physical chemistiy laboratoiy course. For outreach and non-science major chemistiy courses, pie-ptepared quantum dot samples immobilized in a polymer matrix wete used to illustrate the size dependence of the optical properties of CdSe and CdSCxSi.x alloys. For introductoiy chemistiy courses, students synthesized CdSe and CdSCxSi.x alloy samples in addition to examining the optical properties of the quantum dots. The topic of semiconductor quautum dots was chosen to engage the students in order to generate interest and maintain motivation using the observable and colorful trend with size. 

The choice of Lviv as a host site of the Workshop was not by an accident. The traditions of physical and mathematical science in this historic Western Ukrainian city are linked to the names of Marian Smoluchowski and Stefan Banach who lived and worked in Lviv in the early and middle part of the last century. The Lviv physical school in its present form was founded by Ihor Yukhnovskii and is known as the Institute for Condensed Matter Physics. 

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