Advanced Placement and Honors Chemistry Classes from Local High Schools are invited to participate in UCI’s AP Laboratory Initiative, an NSF funded FOCUS! program (http://www.cfep.uci.edu/focus/). Students perform college level chemistry experiments in UCI’s General Chemistry Laboratories. For details contact Dr. Kimberly Edwards at kdmullen@uci.edu or (949) 824-8124.

Teachers are able to choose experiments from UCI’s General Chemistry Laboratory manual that reinforce AP curriculum requirements. (UCI’s General Chemistry Laboratory manual can be found online at: http://eee.uci.edu/programs/gchem/). Students may spend up to four hours performing experiments with PC-interfaced instrumentation such as pH probes, colorimeters, gas pressure sensors, temperature probes, and voltage probes.

The following is a sample of experiments that have been chosen:

Because of the availability of UCI’s labs participating teachers have already made major changes to their curriculum. The value of this program is found in the response of teachers to the question “Does the permanent availability of lab space & equipment at UCI change your curriculum?”

• “Absolutely, a more comprehensive lab leads toward better understanding of concepts. Micro labs at our high school do not allow for the breadth or depth of labs available at UCI.”
• “Yes, we can implement a curriculum that enriches student learning while gaining hands-on experience not available at our high school.”
• “Yes, we do much more sophisticated labs with a need for more challenging preparation and write ups than before.”