Chimica nella Scuola

Il Sistema Periodico di Primo Levi come spunto di percorsi didattici interdisciplinari

Maria Funicello — 2024-04-10

The book “Il Sistema Periodico” written by Primo Levi represents certainly a miliar stone in his life and in the life of all the chemistry students. In this brief article it will be represent as for example the tale on the element Carbon could be used to construct educational path for students of superior school of I and II grade.

Insegnare chimica fisica con dashboard sviluppate in Python

Renato Lombardo — 2024-04-10

Mathematical models and graphs are essential in chemistry and other scientific disciplines, but their complexity can hinder student understanding. Interactive applications, such as dashboards, can simplify complex data and enhance comprehension. Python and Plotly Dash are effective tools for creating custom dashboards tailored to specific teaching needs. These dashboards proved useful for students with limited mathematical background, and they can also support active learning strategies and develop cross-cutting skills like programming. However, their effectiveness depends on integration into the teaching process and teacher guidance.

Processi cognitivi e apprendimento della chimica: uno studio pilota sulla popolazione universitaria a sviluppo tipico

Francesca De Vita — 2024-04-10

The national surveys have observed that Italian students perform significantly worst in the science field compared to their international peers. This is also true when we consider a particular subject, such as chemistry. This is partially explained by teaching practice since the Italian school context rarely allows the possibility to organise and implement interactive teaching strategies. Consequently, most of students learn chemistry by memorizing definitions without reaching a full understanding. Moreover, professors do not have the opportunity to acquire knowledge about the cognitive processes involved in chemistry learning and the teaching strategies that might be used to overcome the conceptual difficulties of the discipline. In addition, they are not aware of the peculiar difficulties of students with Specific Learning Disorder (SLD) and the compensatory measures that could be carried out to improve their learning performance in the science field.
Therefore, the present project has the main goal of extending the knowledge on cognitive processes involved in chemistry learning of undergraduates’ students, to design effective strategies and compensative measure that will improve students’ chemistry learning ability. The present paper reports the results of a pilot investigation, which tested the adequacy of a chemistry learning test on a small sample of Italian undergraduate students.

Perché gli studenti universitari decidono di abbandonare gli studi?

Italo Testa — 2024-04-10

In this paper, we investigated the self-assessment ability of first-year students in the Biology and Engineering degree programs engaged in chemistry and physics teaching, respectively, courses that students usually encounter in the first semester of their first year. Specifically, we investigated the correlations between students’ self-assessment ability and the likelihood that they would pass the final exam for the course. Our study shows that students who are more likely to pass the exam are the most calibrated while students who are less likely to pass the exam turn out to be typically over-confident. It also turns out that boys are on average more over-confident than girls.

Un corso innovativo in cui Chimica e Scienza della Complessità preparano le nuove generazioni ad affrontare le sfide globali del XXI secolo

Pier Luigi Gentili — 2024-04-10

In the 21^st century, humanity is spurred to face global challenges. Global challenges can be won if we prepare the new generations to deal with Complex Systems. Therefore, it is urgent that chemistry is integrated with the Science of Complexity and interdisciplinary courses on Complex Systems are proposed at the University and in Schools.

La formazione degli insegnanti come motore dell’innovazione

Mariano Venanzi — 2024-04-10

In this work, we briefly introduce the different levels of training (initial, in-service) of school teachers and academic staff in view of the new law approved in June 2022. The state of art of the organization of the different teacher training programs has been described and briefly commented, focusing on their priorities and critical issues.

Insegnare chimica con passione tra i banchi di scuola

Alessandra De Togni — 2024-04-10

Insegnare chimica con passione! is the title of a volume published this year in the Epistemology and Didactics of Chemistry Series of Padua University Press, which collects contributions from numerous secondary school chemistry teachers in the Veneto region. The project, which came about as part of the Chemistry PLS, was a new experience for teachers who had the opportunity to disseminate some of the teaching and laboratory activities developed and implemented in the classroom through such an effective and interesting tool as the book. Organizing the content, collaborating with colleagues in writing the text and creating original images, actively participating in the editorial process, was a complex exercise through which the teacher-authors matured scientifically and personally, and saw their daily teaching efforts materialized in a product that is now available to many other teachers. It is precisely the effort to share experiences and exchange best practices that is a key aspect of teacher education whose work is valued and disseminated outside their classrooms. Giovanni Villani (ICCOM-CNR, Pisa) wrote the first chapter contributing as well as editor of the work together with Laura Orian and Marina Gobbo (University of Padua) to a deep reflection on the role of chemistry in our modern world. Eric Scerri (UCLA, California) edited the concluding chapter of the work after meeting and discussing with teachers the foundation and role of chemistry as a science and discipline. The presentation of the book and its contents are followed by elements of reflection on the significance of teaching chemistry in today’s schools from the perspective of secondary school teachers.

L’utilità di un approccio integrato nella didattica della chimica

Valentina Domenici — 2024-04-10

This is a brief report of my experiences as teacher of chemistry education and other chemistry-related subjects at the University of Pisa. The educational approach here described is an integrated teaching method where several active methodologies, such as the cooperative learning and project-based learning, are used together with the epistemological/historical approach in the frame of the STEAM teaching philosophy.

Didattica della Chimica: un’esperienza all’Università di Parma

Dominga Rogolino — 2024-04-10

The birth of a chemistry education course is a complex process that requires the ability to draw ideas and teaching approaches from a vast literature and adapt them to the needs of the operating environment. This contribution describes how the chemistry education course at the University of Parma was conceived and organized. The sharing of teaching-related experiences serves as a source of enrichment and reflection in anticipation of the challenges that lie ahead in designing impactful and meaningful educational courses.

Competenze e formazione STEM come motore della competitività: l’esperienza di Federchimica, federazione nazionale dell’industria chimica

Federchimica — 2024-04-10

The chemical industry, together with the chemical science, plays a fundamental role in sustainable development and in the quality of our lives. All the chemical companies are constantly looking for young people, high school and university graduates. For this reason, Federchimica, the Italian federation of the chemical industry, organizes every year dissemination and orientation initiatives for all school cycles, from Primary School to University, with the aim of integrating and expanding school curricula. We work in synergy with all Education stakeholders: the Ministry of education supports our projects and disseminates them, member companies open the doors of their factories describing the value of their products and showing their attention to sustainability, sector and local Associations create events dedicated to dissemination and orientation.

La nuova edizione del Piano Lauree Scientifiche

Ugo Cosentino — 2024-04-10

The Piano Lauree Scientifiche has been implementing orientation actions for the continuation of university studies in the scientific field and activities aimed at the professional development of in-service teachers for more than fifteen years. These actions are carried out in close synergy with the other planned actions: the reduction of the university dropout rate, self-evaluation activities and laboratories for teaching basic sciences. These approaches offer numerous ideas also in the context of a renewal of university teaching.

Una pagina di Storia della Chimica per la Didattica: lo sviluppo della teoria molecolare della capillarità

Vincenzo Villani — 2024-04-10

The development of understanding of the molecular nature underlying the phenomenon of capillarity and the relation of this with the surface tension underlying the formation of drops and bubbles can become a useful teaching tool in establishing the cause-effect link between the molecular microscopic world and the observed macroscopic world. The chemist uses capillarity in many forms in daily practice, for example in the thin layer chromatography technique, and surface tension in problems of solubility and emulsion stability. However, the depth of these ideas goes far beyond and represents an important page in the history of chemistry and physics, and the development of these concepts is exciting and of educational value. This is a highly interdisciplinary topic, little addressed in teaching programs, but the historical perspective facilitates its exposition and introduces in an innovative way the role of molecular interactions underlying macroscopic phenomena. Although Leonardo already intuited the presence of “hidden” cohesive forces in the formation of a drop, it is in the hands of Laplace’s genius that the molecular theory of capillarity is completely developed and despite the outdated hypothesis, it reaches today.
The rise (or lowering) of the level of a liquid in a capillary tube still aroused wonder in the 18^th century and greatly disturbed temperature and pressure measurements using liquids in capillary tubes. Today, the idea that it was the gravitational force of the interaction between atoms and molecules responsible for the phenomenon may seem naive, but in truth it was a huge step forward towards a unified vision of the forces of Nature from the atom to the universe. The debate in the 19^th century was fierce and profound, it mobilized the greatest minds of the time Laplace, Maxwell, Gauss... Laplace’s theory constituted the solution and the starting point for subsequent studies. The same interactions were placed by the chemist Berthollet at the basis of the chemical affinities, responsible of the reactivity. Then the fundamental laws were deduced, and it was established that the phenomenon of capillarity is due to the surface tension of liquids and this to the short-range attractive and repulsive molecular interactions at the interface.

Il ruolo dell’entropia come descrittore fenomenologico delle reazioni chimiche

Alessandro Motta — 2024-04-10

The presentation of the second law of thermodynamics in high school and early university teachings often leaves students with a sense of elusive abstraction, condensed into the expression “entropy measures disorder”. This could be avoided by treating entropy more specifically as a property derived from the analysis of heat exchanges between the system and the surroundings. In this contest, starting from a modern reinterpretation of Carnot’s work on the efficiency of heat engines, it would be helpful to delve into the analytical derivation of entropy associated with an isothermal expansion process, demonstrating how such a process is intimately related to the thermodynamic explanation of chemical equilibrium. Furthermore, it would be beneficial to explore the historical motivations that led to the formulation of the third principle to clarify its chemical importance in deriving reaction entropy.

I contributi di J. N. Brønsted e di T. M. Lowry alla definizione di acidi e basi

Franco Calascibetta — 2024-04-10

The two physical chemists Johannes Nicolaus Brønsted (1879-1947) and Thomas Martin Lowry (1874-1936)1are usually jointly credited with the definition of acids and bases in terms of acceptors and donors of H+ ions. Each on his behalf, in a completely independent manner, in the same year, 1923, they in fact published two articles from which the aforementioned definition originates. We aim to analyze the contents of these articles to illustrate the different paths taken by the two scientists to arrive at this result.

Il simbolismo chimico come interpretazione unificante del mondo materiale scientifico moderno

Giovanni Villani — 2024-04-10

Galileo’s scientific method, Galileo himself tells us, is built on two pillars: sensate esperienze and dimostrazioni necessarie. In modern terms, experiments and mathematical formalization. These two pillars played a fundamental epistemological/scientific role and demarcated natural science from philosophical interpretations at the birth of modern science. The other side of the coin of the Galilean cultural revolution was that this definition of science placed not only all the human and social sciences, but also the entire chemical-biological-medical scientific area outside the scientific boundary. This last area, over a three-century long journey, has built a third scientific pillar centered on chemical symbolism, essential for the modern definition of scientificity. This process of scientific “reappropriation” occurred in the animate, inanimate and in the world of artificial substances. Today we can certainly say that chemistry is the preferred language for a scientific description of matter, whether inanimate or animate, whether natural or artificial. It is to the example of chemical symbolism that the human and social sciences should refer for a complete reunification with the natural sciences.

Atti del Convegno 2023 della Divisione di Didattica della Società Chimica Italiana

Margherita Venturi — 2024-04-10

Pioggia e acqua

Mauro Icardi — 2024-04-10

When we reflect on water, we too often only concern ourselves with the effects that scarcity or compromised quality may have on the human community. The comments I read on articles dealing with the drought issue are totally anthropocentric. The drought problem is commented on with the idea that it is technological innovations that will solve the problem, as if personal attention and commitment take second place when it comes to having the necessary respect and care in the use of water. If we educate ourselves all together to use water carefully, without wasting a single drop, taking care of it, if we learn to know and respect it, if we know it better, we will help the only planet we have. In such a way, we will also be better people, people who, when they wake up and see that it is raining, no longer snort because there is bad weather outside, but think about how wonderful the water cycle is that quenches the thirst of our only planet.

Chimica e Sostenibilità: un gioco da ragazzi!

Francesca Deganello — 2024-04-10

Thanks to a collaborative network of CNR Institutes located throughout Italy, created as part of the project Change the Game: Playing to prepare for the challenges of a sustainable society, a number of playful-educational activities concerning the teaching of science and sustainability at elementary school have been designed, developed and successfully tested. Indeed, it has been shown how play fosters interest in the topic addressed and develops the child’s problem-solving and critical thinking aptitude.
In this paper, four play-educational paths related to chemistry and sustainability are proposed entitled “Touch, Contact, Chemistry and Sustainability”, “The Recycling Game”, “Discovering Animal Fibers”, and “The Colors of Energy”.

Ripensando l’equazione di reazione

Alfredo Tifi — 2024-04-10

The Project ASSeT, currently underway at ITTS Divini in San Severino Marche, focuses on strengthening the basic tools for the mathematization of reality, both in its quantitative and qualitative aspects. Considering previous activities on stoichiometric relationships, we recognized the need to modify the symbolic description to bring it closer to the essential and systemic aspects of the particle model of chemical reactions. We consider the iconic register presented in the article suitable for this purpose and believe it should be practiced before introducing the typical formalism of chemical equations.

Chimica, Materiali e Sostenibilità

Teresa Cecchi — 2024-04-10

Sustainability is one of the most used words in communication and perhaps it is sometimes abused. It is certainly unachievable without the chemical skills necessary for the transition from the linear economy (plunder, consume, throw away) to the circular one (recovery, transform, reuse), that is the cornerstone of the ecological transition. The laboratory teaching practice is renewed by taking inspiration from the 17 objectives of the 2030 Agenda. Making students aware of the key role of chemistry in harmoniously attending to the planet, profit and people is fully a civic education action.

Le parole e i concetti nella costruzione del curricolo verticale di chimica

Eleonora Aquilini — 2024-04-10

The transition from common sense concepts to scientific concepts in school requires careful consideration of what and how to teach at different levels. Language must accompany the evolution of scientific concepts, so that the scientific language is not perceived as abstract and incomprehensible words. In chemistry, the word “acid” is often taken as an example of this conceptual transformation.