The Great Escape

33 men.
69 long, dark nights.
An agonising wait for 33 wives....plus 1 mistress!

Through determination, creativity, hard work, perseverance of the rescue team and a small miracle all 33 Chilean miners are all alive and at this time perched on the surface of the Earth as opposed to 700m below.  The Daily Telegraph has put together a good timeline of the events leading to their rescue.

Now here's a cave that I wouldn't mind being stuck in...the subterranean spectacle that is Naica's Cave, also known as Mexico Cave of Crystals.  Although bearing in mind that Naica's Cave has a humidity of 100% on top of a temperature of about 50'C one wouldn't want to be in there for more than a few minutes without wearing any protective gear. This famous cave contains some of the largest crystals ever discovered. 

Students of all ages are fascinated by crystals.  Here's a few suggestions for making crystals in the classroom, they have been put together by Salters Chemistry Club, UK.

	crystal growing	teachers notes
	crystal gardens	teachers notes
	silver fractals	teachers notes
	zinc Christmas tree	teacher demo

Students can investigate the effect of the rate of cooling on crystal size by carrying out this experiment with salol as described by the Royal Society of Chemistry

salol fast cooling this represents crystals in eg. basalt

salol slow cooling this represents crystals in eg. granite

If rocks rock your world, the following interactives to identify rocks and minerals are worth a look...

source: Exploring Earth

source: Brooke Weston

source: The Potteries Museum

The RSC have put together a collaborative learning experience called "False diamonds" with teacher notes
It links well with their podcast on Zirconium, click on Zr (element number 40) within this Interactive Periodic table

Linking these rocks back to chemistry, all crystals are made up of ionic bonds.  To reinforce students understanding of ions, see the activities below, sources are all written on them, to download click here. The ionic jigsaw powerpoint is from Pete Hollanby, who has produced a significant number of useful resources for secondary school students.

There are numerous interactives online representing movement of electrons for form an ionic bond, here are some of the ones that I use, sources are on all animations, to download click here. If your students are kinaesthetic learners, why not try roleplay with your students acting as atoms as they transfer sweets/cards etc as the electrons.

...and here's an interactive and couple of quizzes (ionic bonding and stability and reactivity) from the Royal Society of Chemistry on ionic bonding as a part of their chemical misconceptions series.  These are superb and great for reinforcing students understanding of ionic bonding.  See my previous blogpost on back to basics for an animation which really helps students to visualise an ionic compound dissolving in water.

APECS (Able Pupils Experiencing Challenging Science) was set up by The Universities of Cambridge, Reading and Roehampton and as a result of the project Dr Keith Haber put together a superb resource "Enriching School Science for the Gifted Learner.  One of the lessons "judging models in Science" encourages students to "evaluate the usefulness of competing/complementary models in two different contexts by examing whether the models can explain data."

The following logic and collaborative learning puzzles are also worth a look, they are original and innovative, the first is from JChemEd, Ionic Compound logic puzzle, the other two are produced by Flinnsci and follow the pattern of a tournament with certain ions or compounds progressing on to the final.  I posted a few other science related logic puzzles on my previous blogpost, lateral thinking and logic puzzles.

If the intricate detail of crystals fascinates you, then you will be bowled over by the relatively new BBC series "Invisible Worlds" where Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond "goes beyond the limits of the naked eye and explores the hidden secrets of the invisible world around us."

This weekend, wherever you are in the world raise a toast to The Great Escape.  Cheers to the 33 Chilean miners, their families and of course, the rescue team.  I hope they are all enjoying a few cold beers as they look up at a deep blue sky and smile at that shimmering golden orb. The lyrics in "A Beautiful day" by U2 say it all....