Microscale Chemistry Experiments For Upper Secondary Schools In Malaysia

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Date
2011-01
Authors
Abdullah, Mashita
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Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Laboratory work is essential to assist students in acquiring scientific and thinking skills and experience, as well as appreciate chemistry in real life. Students require the hands-on practical and personal laboratory experience. Chemistry practical classes in Malaysian secondary schools are conducted mostly in groups (2 or more), as demonstrations or not conducted at all. Increase in the number of students leads to increased costs of conducting laboratory experiments and also to increase in chemical wastes generated which contributes to environmental pollution. The objectives of the study include developing microscale chemistry experiments for upper secondary chemistry students that correspond to traditional macroscale experiments and comparing microscale and macroscale experiments in terms of accuracy and precision of results obtained, amount of chemicals used, apparatus required, time needed and amount of waste produced. This study also was conducted to determine effectiveness of an individualized approach through microscale chemistry experiments on students’ understanding of chemistry concepts, attitude and motivation and also investigate students’ and teachers’ opinions and problems on using the microscale technique. Fifty microscale chemistry experiments for Form Four syllabus and thirty five microscale chemistry experiments for Form Five syllabus were developed using the Microchemistry Kit (RADMASTE, South Africa) and small volume glassware. For the experiments developed, preliminary investigations were carried out to determine the appropriate chemicals to be used and the volume and concentration for the chemicals were also optimized for each experiment. Findings of this study indicate that the microscale chemistry approach can be adapted for most of the Form Four and Form Five chemistry experiments in the Malaysian secondary school chemistry syllabus. This approach can reduce cost, time spent and chemical wastes generated since it uses much smaller quantities of chemicals compared to the traditional scale experiments. This technique can reduce wastes up to 73%, chemicals used up to 73% and save up to 75% time spent for experiments in the form four syllabus. This technique also can reduce wastes up to 72%, chemicals used up to 59% and save up to 53% time spent for experiments in the form five syllabus. Experiments can also be conducted individually by students.
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Microscale chemistry experiments for upper secondary chemistry students , that correspond to traditional macroscale experiments
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