Wednesday, May 12, 1999
Teacher cooks up interest in science
BY MIRIAM SMITH
The Cincinnati Enquirer
MASON — Students watched from a safe distance as a Gummy Bear was sacrificed in the name of science Tuesday.
Mason High School chemistry teacher Chris Ennis rolled a piece of the candy in table salt after warming potassium chlorate in a test tube.
Mr. Ennis, dressed in safety goggles and a blue bib with “Terrific Science” emblazoned on it, plopped the candy in the tube and a yellow flame shot out.
He was demonstrating for students that if they energize the sodium atom, it will cast a characteristic light — in this case, yellow.
Mr. Ennis thrives on this kind of hands-on approach to teaching chemistry. His zest for teaching recently garnered him the Award for Teaching in High School Chemistry, given by the Cincinnati section of the American Chemical Society.
While he told students to stay back during the demonstration, Mr. Ennis insisted later: “I don't want them to be scared of chemistry.”
“Chemistry's one of those things that scares people off. Everything they deal with in life has some chemical component — the clothes they wear, the shampoo they use, the medicine they take, the cars they drive,” Mr. Ennis said.
Mr. Ennis has been teaching chemistry at Mason High since 1990. Before that, he taught physics for five years at Great Oaks Vocational Center.
He was nominated for the teaching award by the Center for Chemical Education at Miami University at Middletown (MUM).
The nomination was a result of his work at MUM as co-principal on the Partnership for the Advancement of Chemical Technology (PACT). He also was nominated for his efforts piloting the Ambassador Program, designed to bring industrial chemists into the classroom and chemistry students into industry.
One curious student, Joy Fasoli, 15, peered into the blackened test tube after the experiment and concluded, “That's pretty neat.”
Joy, a sophomore, said Mr. Ennis makes learning about science fun.
“He helps me understand it really well,” she said. “We do lab, and we can really see what we're learning on the board really happens in science experiments.”
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