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| Can making movies make you a better chemist? UAB chemistry professor Joe March (left) and graduate student Mitzy Erdmann (right) have proven that it does. Their research-tested approach is now implemented across UAB's introductory General Chemistry curriculum. |
Hollywood has nothing on the UAB Department of Chemistry. While Tinseltown studios generate some 600 movies per year, students in the university's General Chemistry course produce nearly that many each semester.
"Avatar" this is not. Each video clocks in at five minutes or less and follows a strict formula:
SCENE 1, DAY
OPEN in a UAB chemistry lab. THREE or FOUR students take turns demonstrating a fundamental lab technique. Each speaks directly to the camera while they explain how to use a balance, how to pipette, or how to do an accurate titration.
There is no scene 2.
The teaching assistants who grade dozens of these videos each year may relish the occasional creative approaches, such as the group who adopted a "Star Wars" theme (see below), or the ones who broke for commercials. But entertainment isn't the idea. Call it sci (non)fi.
