When will I ever use this again?!

STEM teachers are all too familiar with that wail from students busting their brains over algebra, chemistry, physics, and biology problems that seem to bear no relationship to real life.

In fact, many engineers and scientists use what they learned in school all the time “on the job,” but the connection is rarely clear – even to STEM teachers.

Chemistry Shorts, a series of dramatic, true-to-life videos sponsored by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, aims to close that knowledge gap by communicating to a general audience the many ways in which the chemical sciences are having a major positive impact on humanity.

Each six-minute video includes a proposed lesson plan for incorporating this cutting edge research into the classroom.

The first two videos and downloadable lessons (PDF) are available on YouTube:

• Under the Skin, with Zhenan Bao, Stanford University: Chemical Engineers have created a synthetic skin that can stretch like rubber, carry electricity, and self-heal. These scientists have developed entirely new classes of synthetic polymers in order to create a highly functional replication of human skin.
•  Rewriting Life, with David Liu, Harvard University: The exciting new CRISPR technology, with its potential to eliminate human inherited diseases by using chemistry to alter DNA, has been advanced by David Liu at the Broad Institute. He and his students have changed the original CRISPR process, in which a mutated base pair in DNA is cut and replaced, to a much simpler chemical swapping of base pairs.

The foundation hopes to produce further videos in partnership with other STEM organization, and welcomes your feedback on the films and the accompanying teaching materials.

Filed under: For Teachers, K-12 Outreach Programs, Special Features, Web Resources

Tags: Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, career awareness, Chemical Engineering, chemical sciences, Resources for Teachers, Videos