Electrochemistry - Senior SPARK
This course is no longer being offered.
Course Description
Imagine how different our lives would be without electricity. At almost all times, we are surrounded by structures and devices that rely on electric currents. The discovery of electricity and the ability to control electric currents originally resulted from studying the chemical interactions between different metals. Two hundred years later, technology has developed such that our lives now depend on the connections between electricity and chemistry.
With hands-on experiments, we will examine the answers to such questions as: How do batteries store electrical energy? How can you make batteries using lemons? Why do we make coins and jewelry out of metals like gold, silver, and copper instead of metals like zinc and magnesium? What is rust and what does it have to do with electricity? How can you use electricity to coat one metal with another? How do we measure electricity? How do fuel cells work? Why does water decompose into hydrogen and oxygen gases when you zap it with enough electricity?
Students in this course will learn about the relationship between chemistry and electricity and they will learn to develop their own safe experiments to examine electrochemical principles.
*This Senior SPARK course is designed for students currently in 8th grade (entering 9th grade Fall 2013). Younger students are encouraged to register for our Junior SPARK courses.