Different strokes with starch

Jyotsna Vijapurkar, Aakanksha Sawant, Swapnaja Patil

The starch test is an easy-to-do test, commonly included in school textbooks (generally from grades 6 through 9). All one has to do is add a few drops of iodine to test if something contains starch; if it does, it turns blue. This test is usually done on potatoes or rice or cereal flours.

Seeding discovery

Yasmin Jayathirtha

The process of discovery is always exciting. Encourage your students to ask more questions and experiment more to find the answers. The author encourages you to carry out your own experiments as she explains how she experimented to find out how fats are digested.

Digesting facts in the lab

Yasmin Jayathirtha

A school laboratory may be the last place to set up experiments to understand digestion. But, it can well be done using natural extracts. Read on to find out more.

Digestion in a test tube!

Yasmin Jayathirtha

Food tests are commonly done in a biology classroom. However, some experiments cannot be done because of the complexity of chemicals and the processes . This article highlights an experiment that can be done in a test tube to understand how digestion takes place.

The backstory of balancing equations

Yasmin Jayathirtha

Teachers find that they struggle to teach balancing equations to children with the result that students find chemistry classes very difficult to follow. So, how can the concepts be made clear first before the equations are understood?

Have you seen the ammonia fountain?

Yasmin Jayathirtha

Ammonia is soluble in water. But most chemistry teachers will agree that demonstrating this experiment is a tedious task. Young minds, however, learn best when they can see whether what they have been told is true or not. So here is a much simpler and more spectacular way of proving the above statement.

The earth beneath our feet

Yasmin Jayathirtha

Plants need soil to grow in. Apart from this, have we ever given this element much thought? Through these very intriguing but simple experiments let us learn about the soil and its various components and how each works to add to the richness of the soil.

The greenhouse effect 2

Yasmin Jayathirtha
In the April issue of the magazine, the author had explored the idea of modelling the greenhouse effect. The ‘earth in a bottle’ was a simple model for the earth and its atmosphere. In this article the author goes on to explore the effect of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide.

The green house effect

Yasmin Jayathirtha

Global warming–a word that is so often in the news these days. While we are all aware of what global warming means do we really know why it is happening and how? Here are a couple of experiments that show, on a much smaller scale of course, how global warming happens.

Fun with patterns and ideas

Yasmin Jayathirtha

Have you tried puzzle templates, anagrams, crossword puzzles, mazes and word searches to make your chemistry class both fun and doable ? If your children find it hard to remember the details like formulae, names, terms etc in chemistry, here are simple and effective ways you can change your class from being boring to being a lot of fun.