Chemistry textbooks have traditionally offered a variety of reasons why the study of chemistry is important to citizens of the modern world. This paper presents an approach that encourages students to create their own reasons why chemistry is important, not only to themselves, but for the greater good of the community. The approach was tested on a group of 20 tenth-grade honors chemistry students at a private college-preparatory school in Hawaii. The results show that a strong majority (15) of the students in the class reported that the approach helped them understand the connection between chemistry, themselves, and their community.
Matthew Hughes (Thu,) studied this question.