Chimica nella Scuola

Che dire dell’Homo Sapiens Sapiens?

Margherita Venturi — 2025-07-29

La densità come concetto chiave: un percorso verticale e fenomenologico

Marco Caruso — 2025-07-29

This article presents a vertical teaching path on density, designed for students from middle school to university. A phenomenological approach and the macro-micro-symbolic triangle are used to build a progressive understanding of the concept. Common misconceptions and preconceptions are addressed, with experiments such as saline solution stratification supporting the correction of erroneous ideas. The article incorporates active teaching methodologies and reflects on how density can serve as a gateway to fundamental scientific literacy.

Insegnare (e imparare) la chimica attraverso i musei e le collezioni di strumenti scientifici

Valentina Domenici — 2025-07-29

In this paper, the educational potential of historical scientific instruments was explored and implemented as part of a special teaching project supported by the University of Pisa during the 2023-2024 academic year. The project, titled Teaching (and Learning) Chemistry through Museums and Collections of Scientific Instruments, was coordinated by the authors of this article and it served as an integrative activity for the optional courses “Fundamentals and Methodologies for Teaching Chemistry Education” (Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry) and “Introduction to Medicinal Chemistry” (Master’s Degree in Chemistry). The project involved fifteen students and resulted in the valorisation and enhancement of part of the collection of historical scientific instruments of the Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry at the University of Pisa. Moreover, the undergraduate students actively contributed in creating the museum collection’s website, enriched with historical and educational descriptions of the instruments. This collaborative work later enabled the undergraduate students to conduct demonstration teaching activities for high school students, which were presented during a concluding event of the project. This article will detail the various steps of the activity and discuss its educational, formative, and cultural outcomes, also taking into account the feedback received from the students.

Le nuove frontiere della catalisi ecosostenibile: un viaggio, dai catalizzatori omogenei alla fotocatalisi, ripercorrendo le tappe storiche più rilevanti per il suo sviluppo

Marcello Crucianelli — 2025-07-29

Catalytic processes are behind many chemical reactions, both industrial and non-industrial. Since the 1990s, with the rise of Green Chemistry concept and its 12 principles for making chemistry more sustainable and environmentally friendly, scientists around the world have been increasingly interested in understanding the central role of catalysis. Understanding how catalysts work is very important since they help chemical reactions to take place faster and more efficiently, using less energy and producing less waste. This short review covers the scientific advancements during the past 30 years which allowed the development of catalytic processes in a more eco-friendly way. All this, starting from homogeneous catalysis, moving through hybrid multifunctional catalysts, and ending with photocatalysis, by tracing a brief history of catalysis, its advancement and the most relevant Nobel Prizes specifically awarded to it.

L’enciclica Laudato si’ di papa Francesco

Vincenzo Balzani — 2025-07-29

The many problems of our time are addressed and discussed in a simple and clear way in the encyclical Laudato si’ by Pope Francesco. It is a small but very important book that describes the situation of the human society in our common home, the Earth. To underline the great importance of this encyclical and its profound theological, political and social meaning, the main themes it deals with will be examined.

I protagonisti del mondo materiale

Fabio Olmi — 2025-07-29

The article reviews the most important material substances that have characterized our world. The most important characteristics and uses of five materials are examined, namely sand, salt, coal, iron and copper. It is discussed not only the positive aspects that they have had or have on the development of the world examined, but also the big problems that they have caused with their extraction, manufacture and use. Furthermore, it is examined the negative influence that some of them have had and still have on the planet’s climate and on our survival.

ChemEscape: studenti coinvolti nella chimica

Monja Schilling — 2025-07-29

Un chimico senior racconta… incontri importanti nella sua vita accademica

Domenico Misiti — 2025-07-29

The present article is the first-person account of a series of encounters that have represented the path of a chemist in his professional life over the course of more than half a century.

Project “Teaching with Objects”

Margherita Venturi — 2025-07-29

La teoria molecolare di Ampère: una visione di primo Ottocento carica di stimoli di riflessione

Vincenzo Villani — 2025-07-29

André-Marie Ampère (1775-1836) was a universal genius, ranging from mathematics, to physics, to chemistry. Encouraged by the chemist Berthollet, in 1814 he published an elaborate theory of molecular structure that took into account Gay-Lussac’s law of combination volumes “To provide the means of predicting a priori the fixed ratios according to which bodies combine, bringing their different combinations back to principles that would be the expression of a law of nature”. In this work he enunciated, independently of Avogadro (1811), the law of direct proportionality between the volume of a gas and the number of particles contained therein, independent of their nature. Based on the atomistic vision inaugurated by Newton (1704) and the theory of short-range molecular forces developed by Laplace (1806), Ampère developed a complex geometric-molecular theory that, starting from only two fundamental forms, the tetrahedron and the octahedron, constructed stable molecular structures in accordance with the law of combination volumes of reagents and products. Ampère’s theory was not welcomed by the chemists of the time, however it spread and introduced for the first time the stereochemical vision of molecules and reactions that was finally affirmed in the hypothesis of tetrahedral carbon by van’t Hoff and Le Bel (1874). These anticipations, eclipsed by the nineteenth-century positivism that rejected the existence of atoms and molecules, later returned in various forms and still retain an educational and epistemological value today.