What a year 2009 has been for celebrating science! Besides being the Year of Science and the International Year of Astronomy, 2009 also marks the 140th anniversary of Dmitri Mendeleev’s Periodic Table of the Elements. To commemorate this important event, National Chemistry Week (NCW) 2009 will feature the theme “Chemistry—It’s Elemental!” NCW, the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) annual celebration of the importance of chemistry to our quality of life, takes place October 18–24.
During NCW, teachers and students can study the history and uses of different elements and learn about Mendeleev, who has an element named after him (element #101, the radioactive mendelevium). Teachers, students, and families also can participate in community events organized by ACS outreach coordinators across the country.
“This year’s theme is really special because the elements are the building blocks of everything,” says Stacy Jones, NCW team leader for the ACS Office of Community Activities. “We are hoping that our resources for this year will remind teachers that chemistry is a part of all areas of science, and it can easily be woven into all sorts of lesson plans.”
Free NCW materials aligned with national science standards are available at www.acs.org/ncw. One of them is Celebrating Chemistry, a hands-on activity newspaper for elementary students, available in English and Spanish. It features the history of elements, the roles elements play in everyday life, common and not-so-common uses of elements, and the history of the periodic table.
The website also links to an interactive periodic table available in 34 languages and instructions for Chemdoku, a game modeled after Sudoku that uses chemical element symbols instead of numbers. Teachers can access lists of books, videos, articles, and websites related to the NCW theme.
In addition, the ACS will devote the October 2009 issue of ChemMatters, its magazine for high school chemistry students, to NCW. Request a free copy by using the “subscribe” link at www.acs.org/chemmatters.
NCW also includes a K–12 national poster contest to encourage students’ interest in science. Students create posters of an element or elements in the periodic table; their entries are submitted through ACS local NCW coordinators (see www.acs.org/ncw for contact information). Prizes of $100 for first-place winners and $50 for second-place winners will be awarded in each grade-band category (K–2, 3–5, 6–8, and 9–12). Teachers of winning students will also receive gifts.