Chemical Education Today

354 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 82 No. 3 March 2005 • www.JCE.DivCHED.org

Report

Celebrate Earth Day with ACSby Erica K. Jacobsen

2004 Highlights

Earth Day 2004 centered around the theme “What DoYou Know About H2O?” and ACS sponsored a music videocontest for students in grades K–12. First place winners re-ceived $100 and honorable mention winners received $50.If the video was produced by a group of students, then allmembers of the team shared equally in the award. Winnerswere:

• 3rd–4th Grades, First Place: Burkett Elementary, Pitts-burgh Section, “H2O Squad 2004”.

• 9th–12th Grades, First Place: East Catholic HighSchool/Lyman Hall High School, Connecticut ValleySection, “H2O (You Should Know)”. HonorableMention: East Minoa High School, Syracuse Section,“H2O”.

Each student group left its own unique mark on its videoentry. Burkett Elementary’s students clapped and moved insynchronized choreography as they sang out with enthusiasm.One young student in the front row donned swim goggles

for the performance, while other students held up a huge pa-per raindrop that proclaimed “H2O”. Four students from EastMinoa High School performed live music in the style of themusical group AC/DC. Two students from Lyman Hall HighSchool sang along to an acoustic guitar. Their lyrics includedscience concepts and also paid homage to water’s importancein our lives. They sang “Water is the most important thingon Earth; I have drunk 14,604 [quarts] since birth” as thevideo showed a student drinking a glass of water.

ACS local sections received recognition for offering EarthDay events in their communities (see photos). The MarylandSection co-hosted an event to clean up a portion of the Her-ring Run Watershed in Baltimore at which nearly 100 partici-pants collected four tons of garbage from the site. TheKentucky Lake Section hosted a booth at an environmentalfair in Jackson, Tennessee. They shared the Earth Day messagewith more than 1000 fifth graders in attendance at the fair,and also with a television audience through a live broadcast ontheir local news network.

2005 Resources

There is still time to take advantage of the excellent ac-tivities, articles, games, and contests that ACS is offering tocomplement the 2005 Earth Day theme, “Air—Here, There,Everywhere”. Instructors who wish to spice up their classroomcelebration this coming Earth Day, April 22, 2005, will wantto visit http://chemistry.org/earthday and also check for eventssponsored by their ACS local section.

Resources include previously published items from theACS archives that correspond with the 2005 theme. Severalsections from Wondernet (http://chemistry.org/wondernet) of-fer activities about air that are appropriate for elementary-level students. For example, the section “Earth’s Atmosphere”has an activity that uses homemade parachutes to show that“air is really there”, and an investigation of the percent ofoxygen in air with the classic reaction of rusting steel wool.The Web site http://chemistry.org/kids shares activities such as“Colorful Candy Clouds” that uses candy in water to imi-tate the way that smoke, dust, and gases move in air. Puzzle-oriented students might like to try the word find “Earth’sAtmosphere and Beyond!”. Articles relating to the theme in-clude “Is Air Really There?” and “Ozone: Friend and Foe”.A new feature article is in the works, as well as an activityinvolving hot air balloons.

ACS will once again sponsor a music video contest for stu-dents in grades K–12 with similar rules and prizes as for the2004 event. See http://chemistry.org/earthday for further de-tails.

NOTE: all Web sites accessed Dec 2004.

Erica K. Jacobsen is Associate Editor, Secondary SchoolChemistry, JCE; jacobsen@chem.wisc.edu.

Linette Watkins, Chair of the Chemists Celebrate Earth DayWorking Group, presents two awards: (above) MarylandSection representative Charles Rowell accepts the awardfor the Greatest Community Involvement in Chemists Cel-ebrate Earth Day; (below) Kentucky Lake Section represen-tative Charles Baldwin accepts the award for OutstandingEvent for the General Public Using the Chemists CelebrateEarth Day Theme.

ACS Earth Day Awards

photo by Tracy Halm

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