Australia's Science Forum

Is any one else have teachers starting to do pracs from the new textbooks and finding that they don't actually have 40kg of flour sitting around their prep room, and hydrogen peroxide doesn't come in 10L drums?!?!?

Can I ask which text books? we found some of books the material list read more like a grocery list.

oxford insight science

I find a lot of the pracs in the national curriculum text books impractical. Stage 4 chemical reactions honeycomb type prac needing thermometers measuring up to 154 deg ( because we all have sugar thermometers for toffee) and 110g sugar per group.

Yes, Rae and plain messy too. Obviously written by teachers and not labbies!

I just find the volumes at times are ridiculous. And there are other pracs that can demonstrate the same things without creating a mess.
Does anyone else have thermometers that measure up to 200deg? All ours are 100 or 110. Though we do have old mercury thermometers.

Does anyone else have a pet peeve about all the photos in text books that show the Bunsen burner sitting on a heat pad? Teachers follow these photos and teach the kids to do that, and I spend my time trying to point out that is is illogical.
A Bunsen burner base does not get that hot - the heat mat is to place a hot beaker/crucible item on, instead of the bench. But I often see Bunsens around the room sitting tidily on their little mat and hot crucibles sitting smoking on the benches. Will someone please point this out to those people who write text books..

I was wondering why I bought so much flour this term!!!

I did send an email to the faculty about altering certain pracs to suit the budget and what we have in stock and my HT told me some teachers didn't like that...

I found the DNA extraction prac for Year 10 annoying to follow and it took so long to do!

I have a teacher who just blindly copies out whatever is in the book. So I have been asked in the past for 30 x 250mL beakers, with 5cm strips of zinc to go in each, followed by 100 - 150mL of HCl. Nope! Not doing it. We went test tubes and tiny strips of zinc.

So, yeah, there are quite a few "bucket Chemistry" pracs in more than one version of new Science textbooks!

Fortunately my boss is into behaving economically, and I am just about at the point where I just respond with "well here's what we're gonna do", as I hand over vastly minimized quantities of stuff.

With a smile, of course.

I send out freezer bags for juniors for osmosis, and the seniors can use the dialysis tubing, but one of my teachers says it doesn't work fast enough, so they want the tubing. Sorry bucko, at 5c per bag, thats what you're getting, work around it. Leave it til the next lesson if need be!