Books by Stephen Demeo

This book is for chemistry teachers who are thinking about reinventing their laboratory experiments that they provide to their students. More than a collection of experiments, it is an example of using a chemical theme to teach chemistry. Instead of introducing many different chemicals per experiment as is the norm in most lab manuals, this novel resource focuses on two commonly found elements: Zinc and Iodine.So what is so special about these elements? At the heart of this resource is a colorful cyclic reaction between zinc and iodine, one that produces a compound that can decompose back to its original elements. This unique phenomenon demonstrates that matter not only changes, but is also conserved through a chemical reaction. Knowing that a compound can be the "same but different" than the reactants that formed it, is to understand the essence of chemical change.Complementing this reaction, this book contains experimental activities that utilize the zinc and iodine theme to scaffold new concepts such as the properties of matter, solid and gas stoichiometry, equilibrium, kinetics, acid-base chemistry, and electrochemistry. This teacher tested resource focuses on a set of safe substances that are appropriate for high school teachers who provide an advanced chemistry placement course and for college instructors teaching a first-year chemistry laboratory sequence.

This text is a chemistry problem solving resource appropriate for teachers and their students who are enrolled in high school Advanced Placement Chemistry or in a first-year college General Chemistry course. The book incorporates a chemistry problem solving plan, one that uses an innovative graphic organizer strategy. The strategy - successfully evaluated with students - combines problem solving processes with chemical concepts that will allow students to solve the most common and difficult problems encountered in the first year of chemistry. Topical problem solving will focus on limiting reactant stoichiometry, identifying types of chemical reactions, equilibrium, acid-base equilibria, and electrochemistry.Why would this resource be of interest to chemistry students? To be successful (to get into a well known college, medical school, physical therapy or graduate program) often requires that students get an "A" in your pre-requisite Introductory General Chemistry course. To make matters worse, many college professors feel that only a few students should get A grades, and therefore, they give difficult exams that many students fail; this is the weeding out process that every pre-health student is apprehensive about. To succeed in this competitive environment entails not just studying harder or longer, it means re-organizing textbook content so that it is meaningful to the student. This is the first text of its kind to employ a reliable, research-based strategy that incorporates a decision-based visual tool to solve chemistry textbook problems, ones that can make or break a career.