Ideas for 4 week long chemistry project

[Hyperion]

And no, we can't cook meth.

Our department is pushing hard for different approaches to education - right down to digitizing a lot of content. I'm currently working with about 4 different video game programmers to invent games (I specified) that were both enjoyable and educational.

We developed a pretty strong first project idea - the kids have to design a new soft drink, account for its chemical make-up/safety, and then advertise it. Again, I'm working with local businesses so that these cans can actually be produced.

But that will only last 4 weeks. I'm trying to think of a project after that: at this time they will be studying moles, stoich, and nomenclature.

[Spider]

I would say you could stretch out the classic copper cycle, each phase each week. Probably pretty thin, though. You could also do some electroplating.

Too bad their kids...you could do fermentation.

Oh! Do the plant thing...where you grow sprouted plants in different solutions, each one missing a key nutrient. Ya know, drop the phosphate in one jar, drop the nitrogen in another jar, drop the magnesium in another jar. Measure the differences. Go over ion exchange in the roots, the magnesium in the chlorophyl....

Making them calculate solutions and then balance the equations would cover the moles and stoichiometry stuff. Nomenclature would go along with it. Make the memorize the polyatomic ions and oxidation states. They'll love that.

[Darkhorse]

You should see what can destroy $10,000 worth of half dollars faster: highly concentrated sulfuric acid or public schools bankrolling video games.

it probably won't take the whole 4 weeks to find out.

[Hyperion]

Err, it's out of my own wallet, and it's effective tool for a lot kids with attention problems.If they're immersed in an experience, they're more likely to learn the subject in detail.

[lnrw]

Make some black powder.

[The Comrade]

have them watch a corpse decompose for four weeks and measure the gases that come off of it.

[John Galt]

as noted, it's too bad they are kids, otherwise fermentation would be a good thing to do. is it just "chemistry", though? you noted advertising campaigns for things. it seems that you want "REal world applications of chemistry" but many of them do not go over 4 weeks of what, hour long classes? i dunno if you could do anything with it but some sort of metallurgy of analyzing metals then designing and implementing molds to cast things in. i dunno. i f**k hated ochem labs so i've forgotten all the stuff we did. most of it was spectrometer stuff iirc.

[The Dharma Bum]

Have'em make some DMT

fun times

[Spider]

I don't know what equipement you have or the safety margins, but you could run through the process of chemically extracting the precious metals (gold...silver..) from old electronics components. Maybe do a unit on e-waste and the environment impacts...maybe if you go through enough old processors and such you can score yourself a tiny little gold pellet or something.

[The Dharma Bum]