...My students attend (click here) Yerba Buena High School (YBHS) in San Jose, California. YBHS is one of 12 large high schools in the East Side Union High School District. Our school population ranges from 1600 to 1700 students where 69.5% of the students are low income and 66.8% are English-Learners. The majority of our population is comprised of Hispanic/Latino (57%) and Asian (32%) students. 6 In 2012, YBHS scored 683 on the Academic Performance Index (API) and did not meet the target of 689. 7Currently the school is in its fourth year of Program Improvement which is called the Restructuring Stage, which requires the development of an alternative governance to create a plan of major restructuring within the school. 8 YBHS also struggles with a graduation rate of only 65% which is significantly lower than our district's graduation rate of 76%. Many of the students who will participate in this unit will be the first in their family to pursue a college degree. 9
The audiences for this curriculum unit are 10 th/11 th/12 th grade general chemistry students and AP chemistry students. Students opting to take general chemistry typically intend on furthering their education in college because chemistry is a required course for college readiness. Most students who take AP Chemistry are interested in pursuing a science major and take AP chemistry as a way of preparing for their general chemistry course in college. The unit will mainly focus on general chemistry students as the audience but can be modified for the AP chemistry curriculum. It is my intention to teach this unit to the general chemistry students at the beginning of the 4 th quarter during the stoichiometry unit and give students the opportunity to revisit thermochemistry. AP chemistry students will take on this unit in the middle of the 6 th quarter....
...In 2003, Rice University professor and Nobel Prize winner Richard Smalley made a list called "Top Ten Problems Facing Humanity Over the Next 50 Years." 10 In his list, he put energy as the number one problem. If energy is arguably the biggest concern for today's society, then it is important to understand the meaning of energy. It can be a mysterious word to some because it is an abstract entity that is elusive and not concrete. In the scientific context, energy is defined as the ability to produce change or do work. Energy can produce light, heat, motion, sound, growth, and can power technology. 11 Just as our body can take in food and convert food into energy that makes our body function, the world requires ways of capturing, storing, and converting energy to function. Developing new technology to efficiently make high value energy such as electricity and fuel using natural resources is a fast developing field in energy research....
