Videos
Teacher Members have access to our full repository of videos and video questions to use in your classroom. You can also share videos with your students for 7 days by generating a Student Pass. To view a video, click the Video’s title.
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Video 1: Safety Mindset
The chemistry lab is an amazing place! Through experiments and demonstrations your high school students have been discovering that chemistry is more than just a collection of facts and formulas-- it’s a way of observing and understanding the very real properties of matter all around them. However, the lab can also be a dangerous place. Contrary to what your students might have seen in films and TV, safety is a core value of chemistry—it is essential to everything they do in the lab. It begins with their mindset, the attitudes and beliefs they bring to class with them every day. Use this video to introduce your students to elements of safe importance of safety mindset in the chemistry lab.
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Video 2: Safety Data Sheet (SDS)
Preparation and planning are key to working in the chemistry lab. To be prepared, your students must understand the hazards of any chemicals they will be working with. The place to find that information is the Safety Data Sheet or SDS. The SDS provides detailed information about the properties of a chemical, its hazards, and how to protect yourself from those hazards. Use this video, to guide your students through 16 sections of the SDS for isopropyl alcohol to demonstrate importance of SDS information.
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Video 3: How to Dress for the Lab? And what about Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)?
Wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) for short is one of the main ways for you and your students to stay protected from injury in the lab. PPE includes things like goggles, gloves, lab coats or aprons. These are designed to protect eyes, hands and skin, as well as clothing, from exposure to chemicals. PPE is the most obvious way of preventing contact with chemicals--but it is not the first line of defense. Use these video to teach your students that before they put on any PPE, why they should dress properly for lab.
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Video 4: Preparing for Emergencies
There is an old saying that you should always plan for the best, but prepare for the worst. This is good advice in the lab as well. Use this video to teach your students about two lab emergencies that carry a high risk of injury--spills and fires. The videos describes concrete steps to prevent these emergencies and goes over some of the safety equipment used to deal with them.
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Video 5: RAMP (For Students)
Use this video to teach your students a simple yet powerful tool for protecting you and your classmates in the lab. The tool is called RAMP. RAMP stands for: Recognize hazards; Assess risks; Minimize risks and Prepare for emergencies.
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Video 6: RAMP (For Teachers)
As a teacher, there are steps you can take to make sure your students are as safe as possible while exploring and experimenting in the lab. In this video, we discuss some ideas to help you to set up a safe lab experiment. We use RAMP, the acronym for lab safety. RAMP stands for Recognize hazards; Assess risks; Minimize risks and Prepare for emergencies. RAMP is a simple yet powerful tool to help you prepare for and safely carry out any lab activity with your students.
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The Future of Paint Video
This video explores the fascinating and innovative scientific advancements of paint. Students will learn how the molecular components in paint are helping to evolve in the world around them. Futuristic paint is capable of replacing light switches, conducting electricity, and regulating temperature amongst other things!
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Color Matching Paint Video
This video explains how technology, specifically focusing on spectrophotometry, can be used for paint matching. Students will learn how the spectrophotometer interacts with the spectrum of visible light in order to match or reproduce specific paint colors.
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What are Pigments? Video
This video discusses the chemistry of pigment molecules and how they are used to give paints their specific color. Students will learn about the importance of a pigment’s molecular structure, how they are physically suspended to create a paint color, as well as how they interact with light.
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What is Paint? Video
This video investigates the composition of paint, while analyzing the fundamental chemistry principles of its main components. Students will learn about the differences between three common paint types, water colors, oil-based and acrylic paint as well as the chemistry of each.
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Lise Meitner Video
This video tells the story of Lise Meitner, a pioneering female scientist in the field of nuclear chemistry, who was denied a Nobel Prize but has an Element named in her honor.
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Hybrid and Electric Cars Video
This video explores the chemistry in the batteries that power hybrid and electric cars.
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Niels Bohr Video
This video tells the story of Niels Bohr, a great scientist who redefined how we think about atoms and the electron. Bohr’s model of the atom helped to advance understanding of subatomic particles, and holds an important place in the history and development of the atomic theory.
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The Temperature Guys Video
This video tells the story of how temperature as we currently know it evolved. The first thermometers invented in the early 1600s are very different than ones we use today!
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The Internal Combustion Engine Video
This video investigates both the mechanical and the chemical processes used in the internal combustion engine, as well as the history and evolution of the combustion engine.
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Robert Boyle Video
This video tells the story of Robert Boyle, a great chemist and discoverer of Boyle's Law, which describes the relationship between pressure and volume of a gas.
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Phosphorous Video
In this video, Sam Kean tells the story of how phosphorus was at the center of the race to discover the structure of DNA.
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Marie Curie Video
This video tells the story about Marie Curie, including her Nobel Prizes, radiation experiments, and discovery of new elements. Irene Curie is also mentioned.
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Ernest Rutherford Video
Rutherford's initial research was studying alpha particles, which he hypothesized were helium nuclei. With the help of Hans Geiger, Rutherford conducted the gold foil experiment, which justifies that the nucleus of an atom is a dense collection of protons and contains the majority of an atom’s mass. It also inferred that most of the atom is empty space and electrons are not located in the nucleus. He won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1908 for his studies on radioactive substances.
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Dimitri Mendeleev Video
This video tells the story of how Dimitri Mendeleev organized the periodic table, even leaving gaps to be filled in with elements that weren't yet discovered.
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Catalytic Converters Video
This video investigates the role of a catalytic converter and its corresponding chemical reactions within a vehicle. Students will learn about both oxidation and reduction reactions and how they, in combination with a catalyst, can impact the molecules released in a car’s exhaust.
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History of the Periodic Table Video
In this video, Sam Kean tells the story of the development of the periodic table. He also pays tribute to each of the major scientific contributors, including Dimitri Mendeleev, who made great discoveries through their efforts to best organize the elements.
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Astatine Video
In this video, Sam Kean tells stories about astatine, the rarest element in the universe.
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Arsenic Video
In this video, Sam Kean tells stories about arsenic, a deadly element that was once referred to as the "Inheritance Powder".
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Antoine Lavoisier Video
This video tells the story of Antoine Lavoisier who many consider to be the father or modern chemistry. Lavoisier discovered oxygen and hydrogen and first proposed the Law of Conservation of Mass.
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Ancient Chemistry Video
This video traces the history of chemistry from the discovery of fire, through the various metal ages, and finally to the great philosophers.
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Amedeo Avogadro Video
This video tells the story of Amedeo Avogadro, the scientist given credit for the mole concept, but who discovered other things in chemistry too.
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Alternative Fuels Video
This video analyzes alternatives to petroleum based fossil fuels, such as biofuels and hydrogen fuel cells.
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Acid & Base Guys Video
This video tells the story of how the definition of acids and bases has evolved from Lavoisier, to Arrhenius, Bronsted-Lowry, and Lewis.