Teaching Problem Solving

Submitted by Barbara Reisner / James Madison University on Fri, 02/18/2011 - 05:56

Every year about this time in the semester when I teach General Chemistry I, I realize that one of the  significant obstacles in chemistry for my students is their ability to read and interpret problems - they get hung up on the translation of words.  I'd really like to find more examples of word problems that don't require specific chemical knowledge but do require this translation (and involve things like unit conversion and percentages). We develop a problem solving method in class, but I feel like working with this sort of problem would be really beneficial.

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