We are thrilled to announce the release of our newest lesson plan, “Concrete without Quarries,” a lab geared to help middle-school students learn valuable chemistry lessons based on life-friendly practices. The lab highlights alternatives to the energy-intensive and often-hazardous processes used in traditional school chemistry labs—the same processes used by industrial chemistry labs
“Concrete without Quarries” helps students explore how nature creates calcium carbonate, a compound needed to manufacture cement, at ambient temperatures and using abundant, readily available raw materials. The lesson plan addresses key chemistry education standards and is available to registered educators of our Biomimicry Education Network, which is free to join.
This lesson plan is part of a larger effort to expand our nature-inspired chemistry curricula and resource offerings. We will add more versions of “Concrete without Quarries” for other age groups soon, as well as several other new lab-based lesson plans to our offerings over the next year. For more on nature-inspired chemistry, explore our wealth of new strategies available on AskNature.
We’d love to hear your feedback on the new lesson plan. Please email Megan Schuknecht with any comments.