{"title":"A Case Study of the East Palestine, Ohio Train Derailment Disaster for Upper-Level Undergraduate Analytical Chemistry Courses","authors":"Nicole M. Dickson-Karn*, ","doi":"10.1021/acs.jchemed.4c0083110.1021/acs.jchemed.4c00831","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p >The East Palestine, Ohio train disaster of February 2023 resulted from the derailment of dozens of train cars which leaked toxic chemicals, caught fire, and threatened the area with an explosion as a result of the possibility of polymerization of vinyl chloride. To mitigate the possibility of explosion, vinyl chloride was vented and burned from five train cars, resulting in a cloud of black smoke that could be seen and smelled for miles. An interrupted case study assignment based on the initial environmental and health concerns and data collected from air, water, and soil in the days following the disaster has been designed and implemented in an instrumental analysis laboratory course. While case studies are used frequently in business, medicine, and law, fewer case studies are found in the literature in the field of chemistry. Student work and survey data have been collected and analyzed, and findings suggest that this case study is effective at developing students’ problem-solving and critical thinking skills as well as fostering their ability to communicate scientific findings to nonscientists. Topics such as sampling, limit of detection, and instrumental methods are emphasized in the assignment. Student feedback suggests that the assignment allows students to better understand how analytical chemistry can be used in the real world, and students are highly responsive to the use of a real-world example for understanding analytical chemistry.</p>","PeriodicalId":43,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chemical Education","volume":"101 12","pages":"5297–5305 5297–5305"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Chemical Education","FirstCategoryId":"92","ListUrlMain":"https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.4c00831","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"CHEMISTRY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The East Palestine, Ohio train disaster of February 2023 resulted from the derailment of dozens of train cars which leaked toxic chemicals, caught fire, and threatened the area with an explosion as a result of the possibility of polymerization of vinyl chloride. To mitigate the possibility of explosion, vinyl chloride was vented and burned from five train cars, resulting in a cloud of black smoke that could be seen and smelled for miles. An interrupted case study assignment based on the initial environmental and health concerns and data collected from air, water, and soil in the days following the disaster has been designed and implemented in an instrumental analysis laboratory course. While case studies are used frequently in business, medicine, and law, fewer case studies are found in the literature in the field of chemistry. Student work and survey data have been collected and analyzed, and findings suggest that this case study is effective at developing students’ problem-solving and critical thinking skills as well as fostering their ability to communicate scientific findings to nonscientists. Topics such as sampling, limit of detection, and instrumental methods are emphasized in the assignment. Student feedback suggests that the assignment allows students to better understand how analytical chemistry can be used in the real world, and students are highly responsive to the use of a real-world example for understanding analytical chemistry.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Chemical Education is the official journal of the Division of Chemical Education of the American Chemical Society, co-published with the American Chemical Society Publications Division. Launched in 1924, the Journal of Chemical Education is the world’s premier chemical education journal. The Journal publishes peer-reviewed articles and related information as a resource to those in the field of chemical education and to those institutions that serve them. JCE typically addresses chemical content, activities, laboratory experiments, instructional methods, and pedagogies. The Journal serves as a means of communication among people across the world who are interested in the teaching and learning of chemistry. This includes instructors of chemistry from middle school through graduate school, professional staff who support these teaching activities, as well as some scientists in commerce, industry, and government.