Local events mark National Chemistry Week on Oct. 22-28

The Wisconsin local section of the American Chemical Society (ACS), together with the chemistry department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Institute for Chemical Education, will celebrate National Chemistry Week, Oct. 22-28, with several interactive events highlighting the theme “Your Home: It’s All Built on Chemistry.”

The celebration begins on Sunday, Oct. 22, with a haunted house from 1-4 p.m. at 619 N. Lake St. At more than a century old, this house of the co-ed chemistry fraternity Alpha Chi Sigma is a perfect setting for a spooky story. Kids and parents will be guided through a basement with characters lurking in the shadows, led upstairs to bedrooms transformed into spaces charged with electricity and papered with polymers, and finally funneled through great rooms on the first floor haunted by ghosts that promise a surprise ending. The recommended audience is grades three-seven. Although the event is free, donations will be accepted on behalf of Habitat for Humanity of Dane County.

Volunteers will also visit the 12 seventh-grade science classes at Cherokee and O’Keeffe middle schools on Tuesday, Oct. 24, and Wednesday, Oct. 25, respectively. Because polymers make up 80 percent of building materials for homes, experiments will focus on the chemistry of polymers and complement the content students are learning.

This continues the relationship established in 2004 with those seventh-grade classrooms, which are piloting a new science curriculum that includes chemistry. Last year’s program was such a success that the local section was a finalist for the ChemLuminary award for an outstanding event for a specific audience at the recent national ACS meeting in Washington, D.C.

National Chemistry Week is an annual event sponsored by the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific organization. National Chemistry Week is a community-based program uniting ACS local sections, businesses, schools and individuals in communicating to the public, particularly elementary and secondary school children, the importance of chemistry to the quality of modern life.