Chimica nella Scuola

Per cominciare bene il nuovo anno

Margherita Venturi — 2025-04-04

La strumentazione scientifica e la cultura

Eleonora Aquilini — 2025-04-04

The gaseous state is, from an educational point of view, a difficult state of matter to deal with and acquire. Studying gases presents considerable cognitive difficulties because their materiality is not perceived. In fact, while the solid and liquid states have always been consciously perceived and used by mankind, the gaseous state only began to exist recently, at the beginning of the eighteenth century (Hales, Black), although phenomena and experiments involving gases had been known since antiquity. The study of gases was made possible thanks to the pneumatic bath. Understanding the importance of this instrument for the birth of chemistry as a science has great cultural and educational value.

GreenLab: un approccio green nel laboratorio di chimica organica

Andrea Burato — 2025-04-04

The organic chemistry lab in schools, traditionally characterized by use of hazardous reagents and toxic solvents, represents an environment where exposure to harmful substances can be frequent, both for students and teachers. Therefore, one of the most significant challenges facing this discipline today concerns the application of Green Chemistry principles, with the aim of making the laboratory a safer and more sustainable place. Making a teaching laboratory greener, especially one focused on organic chemistry, can represent a true revolution encompassing many aspects: from the use of less hazardous substances to the reduction of waste, from employing sustainable solvents to optimizing resources. The challenge lies in transforming traditional teaching methods, often long-standing, into practices that not only maintain educational effectiveness but also adhere to safety and sustainability standards. This article aims to explore the possibilities of applying Green Chemistry in school laboratory activities, providing concrete examples and emphasizing the importance of a responsible and conscious approach in training future chemistry professionals.

Nel nome di Elais: dall’olio di oliva agli oli essenziali

Maria Irene Donnoli — 2025-04-04

This work represents an educational experience included in the PTOF project named “The essential is circular”, which involves extraction of essential oils by natural sources like lavender, rosemary, orange, other citrus fruits and other materials. Most of these sources are partly used for other processes and the unused portion most often constitutes waste. The idea is to turn these potential wastes into resources by implementing the concept of circular economy; in this experience the students develop specific skills using the teaching methodology of Service Learning.

L’elettrochimica e l’idrogeno verde

Roberto Soldà — 2025-04-04

Currently, electrochemistry is very much involved in research related to the production of green hydrogen. In this paper, to deepen some elementary knowledge of basic electrochemistry related to the production of green hydrogen, three experiments are proposed. With little time expenditure, they can be linked to the electrochemistry laboratory experiences indicated for the first two years of secondary school.

Allenare le abilità di osservazione e descrizione nella scuola primaria in un percorso sui miscugli

Sara Pettiti — 2025-04-04

In the following educational proposal designed for a third-grade primary school class, the topic of mixtures and the methods for their separation are addressed. A hands-on laboratory approach is adopted, granting students ample autonomy in exploring the materials available. The teacher acts as a supervisor and tutor, playing a crucial role by providing guidance. By creating an environment with appropriate stimuli, the teacher enables students to experience the joy of discovery and the progressive construction of knowledge.

Macromolecole: il livello mancante tra le molecole e le cellule?

Giovanni Villani — 2025-04-04

Raffaele Piria e gli studi sulla salicina

Roberto Zingales — 2025-04-04

Raffaele Piria’s researches on salicin and populin are here reviewed to show: (1) how, at the middle of XIX century, the uncertainty on atomic weights led to different formulas for the same organic substance; (2) how the composition of large organic molecules could be found, by breaking them in smaller residuals; (3) how the attacking points, by which smaller molecules united each other to give bigger ones, were found.

La ricerca multidisciplinare, un filo che lega diversi saperi

Mauro Manno — 2025-04-04

The hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the National Research Council (CNR), the largest public research institution in Italy, was an opportunity to propose scientific and dissemination initiatives by public engagement throughout Italy. As part of the event “Open Doors at CNR – Palermo”, on October 13th, 2023, the authors of this work met high school students at the Research Area of the CNR in Palermo, to discuss and reflect on some meta-scientific aspects of the researchers work, on how modern scientific research is a multidisciplinary activity that links multiple fields, and on how both inter- and trans-disciplinarity favor frontier research and are fundamental in the education of high school students. A year after that round table, the reflections of this article are devoted to high school teachers, who want to deepen and introduce students to the themes of multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to research, the trans-disciplinarity of knowledge, the researcher’s profession and the research activities carried out for the benefit of society, environment and economy.

Educazione democratica, ricerca scientifica, impegno politico e femminismo attraverso la vita di Irène Joliot-Curie

Raffaele Cariati — 2025-04-04

The communist sympathizer Irène Joliot-Curie received an offer to join the government from Léon Blum, after the victory of the Popular Front in the second round of the parliamentary elections on 3 May 1936. Irène Joliot-Curie, Nobel prize winner in Chemistry in 1935, based on the work of Marie and Pierre Curie, who isolated some natural radioactive elements, succeeded in transmuting certain elements (such as boron, aluminum and magnesium) into synthetic radioactive isotopes. It appears, therefore, as the most daring appointment of Léon Blum. Republican, secular, progressive, will pass, not without leaving a mark in the state undersecretariat for scientific research. Researchers in mathematics and science education often stress the current and urgent need for humanization of teaching practices by interfacing them with history, the environment and the narrative of how scientific research also shapes the formation of a scientific spirit that commits politically towards the construction of a common good for all society. Very often in the classroom, in the name of the god of presumed effectiveness, teaching is oriented mainly towards algorithmic practices and semiotic treatments. A transdisciplinary reflection on the biography of Irène Curie, understood as a pedagogy of choice and commitment, can be an opportunity to strengthen the positioning of the dissemination of chemical sciences in space, in the time and complex and heterogeneous system of democratic scientific education.

Il volume Antiscienza e Salute presentato in Senato

Silvano Fuso — 2025-04-04

I tanti tipi di museo

Luigi Campanella — 2025-04-04