Chemistry of Everyday Materials

"New Paper from Newspaper," JCE Classroom Activity #39, was prepared in conjunction with National Chemistry Week 2001. It deals with making paper from pulp and appears on p 1512A. Reading the activity prompted me to think about the breadth of chemical topics involved in studying the manufacture of paper. Examples are carbohydrates (sugars, starches, and cellulose--natural polymers) and hydrogen bonding. Of these topics, only hydrogen bonding is discussed in many first-year chemistry courses, and probably not in connection with the making of paper. Is that the way it should be?

In addition to the intended connection with art, the activity is strongly connected with biology. Do students relate paper with the walls of plant cells? Do they recognize that the name given the chief material of plant cell walls, cellulose, shares a common etymology with cell? Or that cellulose is a natural polymer of glucose, which itself consists of covalently bonded carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms? And that brings us back to chemistry and another answer to the frequently heard "why do we have to learn this?", at least with respect to the concepts of covalent bonding and hydrogen bonding.

Papermaking is associated with another obvious interdisciplinary connection, the one between chemistry and history. The development of paper as a medium on which ideas and information could be recorded, preserved, and communicated had a profound impact on the development of civilization. Despite the growing importance of electronically transmitted and stored information, paper documents persist in commerce, government, and our everyday lives.

Are you still not convinced that an activity on papermaking is worthy of study? Papermaking has potential as a theme for differentiating between science and technology and for exploring the relationship between science and technology. The National Science Education Content Standard on Science and Technology has two aspects: "Abilities of technological design" and "Understandings about science and technology" (1). The topic of papermaking provides possibilities for addressing both of these. "New Paper from Newspaper" involves students in the technological aspect and provides suggestions for extending their involvement to other areas. As in all JCE Classroom Activities, print- and Web-based references are provided.

Paper is not the only everyday material that can be used to make connections between chemistry and other disciplines and to emphasize chemistry as a part of science and technology. Some other JCE Classroom Activities that deal with materials or with chemicals that have "real world" applications include fire retardants (2), hydrophobic sand (3), natural dyes (4), zeolites in detergents (5), soapmaking (6), and anthocyanin pigments (7).

A wide range of full-length articles covering a variety of materials and technological applications of chemicals appear in JCE as well. A number of these are Products of Chemistry feature articles, some recent examples being discussions of pharmaceuticals from plants (8), molecular electronics (9), gas hydrate deposits (10), poly(methyl methacrylate) as artificial glass (11), and polymeric nanocomposite materials (12). I encourage you to review some of these activities and articles for use and discussion in your classroom.

Locating Articles about Everyday Materials

The JCE Online Index provides an efficient means of locating resource articles. It may be accessed by clicking the labeled link Search, which is found in the left-hand menu on the HS CLIC home page.You can search by keyword, title, or author. It is not necessary to know the entire title, because you can search for one or more words that might appear in the title. The online index includes all volumes of JCE. Articles published in 1995 and subsequent years appear in the search results as a clickable link to the article abstract, adding to the index's value for a busy reader.

It is not necessary to be a subscriber in order to use the index. However, there is a definite advantage to being a subscriber because full-text download of any article published from September 1996 to date is possible from the abstract page. Thus, these articles may be read from your computer screen or printed on your printer. Supplemental material to an article is also available for download by subscribers.

Literature Cited

1. National Science Education Standards, National Academy Press: Washington, DC, 1996: pp 190-193.
2. J. Chem. Educ. 2001, 78, 328A.
3. J. Chem. Educ. 2000, 77, 40A.
4. J. Chem. Educ. 1999, 76, 1688A.
5. J. Chem. Educ. 1999, 76, 1416A.
6. J. Chem. Educ. 1999, 76, 192A.
7. J. Chem. Educ. 1997, 74, 1176A.
8. Houghton, Peter J. J. Chem. Educ. 2001, 78, 175.
9. Ward, Michael D. J. Chem. Educ. 2001, 78, 321.
10. Pellenbarg, Robert E. J. Chem. Educ. 2001, 78, 896.
11. Chisholm, Michael S. J. Chem. Educ. 2000, 77, 841.
12. Oriakhi, Christopher O. J. Chem. Educ. 2000, 77, 1138.