Danette Goulet -- IN THE CLASSROOM

* IN THE CLASSROOM is a weekly feature in which Daily Pilot education

reporter Danette Goulet visits a campus within the Newport-Mesa school

district and writes about her experience.

Large plastic goggles covered students’ faces as they dripped

hydrochloric acid into beakers filled with zinc.

They stood in pairs at scarred counter tops, with sinks in the center

flanked by gas spigots. At the front of the Newport Beach classroom were

orange tubs for sorting the various materials: black rubber stoppers,

glass beakers and test tubes, corks and rubber tubing.

Anne Baffert’s chemistry class at Newport Harbor High School was

conducting experiments with hydrogen. But the scene was so familiar it

could have been any high school chemistry lab in America -- including

mine.

My sense of nostalgia grew as I settled in with two girls and watched the

experiments unfold.

Juniors Nicole Matten and Becky Overton were following the directions on

their lab sheet like a recipe. Becky read the directions slowly and

carefully, tracking the text with her finger as Nicole carried out her

instructions.

A tube connected a beaker of zinc to a tub of water. The girls were

filling beakers with pure hydrogen gas by displacing the water in the

beakers with the gas, which was created when the hydrochloric acid was

added to the zinc.

Once four beakers and two test tubes were filled with the gas, they began

the experiments.

What did they learn? When a flame is put to a test tube of hydrogen, it

makes a popping noise. When a test tube of hydrogen is held upside down

and a flame put to it, it also makes a popping noise.

“So, what does that mean?” I asked. The girls both looked at me with

expressions that said “I have no idea.”

Next, they allowed 15 seconds’ worth of air into a beaker of hydrogen and

put a flame to it. Result: a louder popping noise.

But when they reversed that experiment ... no noise.

Nicole had an answer for that one. “That means hydrogen is lighter,” she

deduced.

The next mix was hydrogen and oxygen -- a combustible combination.

That discovery set off pure chaos across the room, as teams of 16- and

17-year-olds created their own miniature explosions. Boys snickered,

girls shrieked and everyone jumped as their neighbors’ experiments were

ignited.

Baffert, listening to the students’ conversations as they cleaned up the

lab, said the combustibility of hydrogen and oxygen is a popular topic

among students who conduct the experiment each year.

Odd, but no one ever seems to notice the condensation created in the

beakers. If they did, they would realizes what they already knew before

the experiments began -- that hydrogen and oxygen make water.

FYI

* WHO: High school sophomores and juniors in Anne Baffert’s chemistry

class

* WHAT: Students conduct hydrogen experiments

* WHERE: Newport Harbor High School

* MATERIALS: Zinc and hydrochloric acid = hydrogen + oxygen = water and

flames

* LESSON TAUGHT: Hydrogen and oxygen make water

* LESSON LEARNED: Hydrogen and oxygen are combustible