Exploring Careers: Chemical Engineering (Grades 7-12)

Graphic: Ji Sun An

National Engineers Week, February 20-26

Engineering is the art of applying scientific and mathematical principles, experience, judgment, and common sense to create or develop new products that benefit people and solve problems. Engineers search for better, less expensive ways to use the forces and materials of nature to meet tough challenges as people encounter them. There are many fields of work within engineering; one of the five largest branches is chemical engineering.

Chemical engineers solve problems by creating new products or by using chemicals to connect science and manufacturing. They apply principles of several sciences, such as chemistry and physics, to branches of engineering, including mechanical and electrical engineering. For instance, some chemical engineers are studying ways to desalinate seawater, by removing the dissolved salts, to make the water safe to drink. Other chemical engineers have worked to develop new products, such as the ceramic heat-absorbing tiles for the space shuttle that protect the shuttle during reentry through Earth's atmosphere.

Chemical engineers also work to solve our immediate, day-to-day problems. For example, chemical engineers are currently attempting to make new materials for clothing or carpets that won't stain. Still other chemical engineers work in the health care, biotechnology, pollution control, or business services industries. And related to all these areas is the issue of safety. Chemical engineers are very interested in safety. Are the ingredients safe? Are the products and processes safe? As you can see, since everything is made up of chemicals, this exciting field is as wide and open as the world itself.

Connections

Chemical engineers create an amazing array of products. Let your students try out being a chemical engineer and experience that feeling of excitement when they produce a material happily called gluep! Gluep is a substance, something like Silly Putty, and is quite easy to make. It's a combination of water, white glue (like Elmer's), a little food coloring, and a borax solution.

Challenge your students to find the perfect gluep formula for a product that will form a smooth sphere, bounce like a ball, and yet smooth out to a pancake-thin cylinder if left undisturbed on a tabletop. Do not reveal any information about how the chemicals should be combined; there are no particular safety concerns as long as students wear protective eye goggles (borax is a laundry additive, after all).

Provide the students with all the supplies (beakers, measuring equipment, balances, etc.) they would like to use in their experiments. As students work, encourage them to carefully record the amounts of the materials they use, the procedures and results they attain, and the formula they used in their final product (for example, 2 ml borax and 3 ml white glue).

Finish the lesson with a share-a-thon in which the students can compare their products and formulas. Explain to your students that chemical engineers work in much the same manner, as they design and attempt to create new products to meet an identified need among the population. This activity should sufficiently engage your students in chemical engineering. The activities and resources listed below can be used to explore, extend, explain, and ultimately evaluate what they have begun to learn through the lesson.

Web Resources

1. American Institute of Chemical Engineers: Career Choices for Chemical Engineers
   
   http://www.aiche.org/careers/
   The professional organization for chemical engineers maintains a web site packed with information about careers in chemical engineering. The job descriptions section has Quick Time movie clips that are interesting, and the workplace section contains salary and historical information.
   
   
2. Scientists of the American Chemical Society: Chemistry.Org
   
   http://www.chemistry.org/portal/a/c/s/1/home.html
   The American Chemical Society maintains this excellent web site. Breaking news stories, information about scheduled events and meetings, reviews of publications, and career information make it worthwhile to anyone interested in this exciting field.
   
   
3. Occupational Outlook Handbook: Chemical Engineers
   
   http://stats.bls.gov/oco/ocos029.htm
   On this site, you can read all about the field of chemical engineering: the training needed, the working conditions, even the salaries. Comparable information about other branches of engineering is also available.
   
   
4. PLC (Polymers & Liquid Crystals)
   
   http://plc.cwru.edu/tutorial/enhanced/main.htm
   (An ENC Digital Dozen selection, ENC#011048) This site, maintained by Case Western Reserve University, is an online tutorial for polymer and liquid crystal chemistry. High school students taking chemistry would enjoy and understand the interactive experiments; middle school students could at least gain some exposure through Shockwave demonstrations and simulations of the chemistry concepts they will learn later.
   
   
5. Chemicool Periodic Table
   
   http://www-tech.mit.edu/Chemicool/
   (An ENC Digital Dozen selection, ENC#014112). This site, maintained by a chemical engineering graduate student, provides comprehensive, easy-to-understand information about the periodic table of elements. Though it focuses more on chemistry than chemical engineering, the site, and its many links to other periodic table sites, will make any discussion of chemical engineering more accessible.
   
   
6. Guide Me: NACME
   
   http://guidemenacme.org/
   (ENC#026702) This web site offers an overview of chemical, civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering and presents brief job descriptions of engineers currently working in those fields. Mini-videos help round out the picture of each of the fields. One section of the site provides information on scholarships for minority students who want to study engineering.
   
   

Ready-to-Go Activities

1. SWE Lesson Plan: Chromatography
   
   http://www.swe.org/iac/LP/chrom_01.html
   (Grades 5-8) Although written for students in grades 5-8, this chromatography activity could be modified for older or younger students. While it does not allow students to experience the full force of the challenges chemical engineers face in their jobs, this activity does give students the opportunity to learn about chromatography and chemical reactions as they perform an experiment to separate color pigments. The web site includes a student journaling section, a rubric for assessment, and correlations to national science standards as well as background information and student worksheets. A highly engaging, worthwhile, and safe activity and a very user friendly site!
   
   
2. A Sightseer's Guide to Engineering
   
   http://www.engineeringsights.org/
   Visit a place in New Hampshire that makes pewter, or a plant in North Dakota that makes synthetic fuel. Drop in virtually to a paper mill, or a plastics center and museum in Massachusetts. Help yourself to a virtual tour of sites across the United States where chemical engineers are at work. Search by category for "Power Plant" and visit one of the four nuclear sites that are listed on the next screen. Use a map in your classroom to help students locate the sites and determine whether there are any places near your school where chemical engineers might be working to create a new product for us.
   
   
3. Stain Guide
   
   http://www.chemistry.co.nz/stain_frame.htm
   While chemical engineers work to create new fabrics that resist stains, have your students work to create the "impossible stain." Preselect from the list of "stain makers" in the menu on the left those agents that would be safe to have students use--there are many, for example, ballpoint ink, baby oil, butter, mud, tomato juice. Have students experiment with different combinations of fabrics and spotting agents to learn through inquiry what agents create an impossible-to-remove stain on a particular fabric. Create a "stain table" that charts your work. Then work backwards from this table and have students develop their own experiments through manipulation of the variables.
   
   

Classroom Resources from the ENC Collection

1. Polymer research and development
   Date: 2000 Grade(s): 9 - 12 Cost: $12.90 - $49.90 ENC#: 019182
   This multimedia unit--made up of a video, a CD-ROM, and a combination textbook-lab manual (75 pages)--presents information on polymer research and development, along with hands-on activities that ask students to, for instance, test materials for permeability and tensile strength. Besides being well designed and presenting the information clearly, what's nice about this unit is that it lets students play the part of research and development technicians and try to solve real-world problems. The unit is part of a series called Science in a Technical World. Other units in the series that are particularly pertinent to chemical engineering include The Carbonated Beverage Industry (ENC#019180), Pulp and Paper Research and Development (ENC# 019183), and Paint Research and Development (019185).
   (For more details see ENC Record)
   
   
   
2. Chem Matters
   Date: 1993 Grade(s): 9 - 12 Cost: Out of Print ENC#: 003300
   Chem Matters is a newsletter-type publication of the American Chemical Society for high school chemistry teachers and their students. For a minimal cost per year, you can receive Chem Matters and introduce your students to the idea that the world of chemistry and the real world are the same: Everything is made of chemicals!
   (For more details see ENC Record)
   
   
   
3. People who took chemistry, that's who!
   Featured in ENC Focus  
   Date: 1992 Grade(s): 7 - 11 Cost: $24.95 ENC#: 016200
   In this video, a diverse student group discusses why chemistry is important. What is really cool, and makes the video worth the cost, is the clips taken at nine different locations of chemists and chemical engineers at work. Students will be interested in seeing how two-liter pop bottles, compact discs, and polyester are made, and teachers will find the list of resources helpful as well.
   (For more details see ENC Record)
   
   
   
4. Careers for chemists: a world outside the lab
   Featured in ENC Focus  
   Date: 1997 Grade(s): 9 - Post-Sec. Cost: $15.00 ENC#: 015989
   This text will provide high school students with an overview of a variety of career areas within the chemical sciences. It features the profiles of 80 people who use their training in chemistry in an assortment of careers.
   (For more details see ENC Record)
   
   
   

Teacher Resources from the ENC Collection

1. Chemical manufacturing: the process of mixing
   Date: 2000 Grade(s): 6 - 12 Cost: $12.95 ENC#: 021036
   This resource presents material about the process of mixing and offers a number of student activities related to mixing. One activity, for example, focuses on the contents of a box of raisin bran. Another explores the idea of whether grinding will improve homogeneity. The book also provides information about chemical engineers, the chemical industry, and the history of some chemical processes such as glassmaking.
   (For more details see ENC Record)
   
   
   

Search Strategies

Find more materials by searching Curriculum Resources on ENC Online using these terms: Chemical engineering, Chemistry, Engineer, Engineering, or Plastics.

Connections to Standards

Realizing that there are many ways to use this Classroom Calendar entry, we chose these standards because they relate to the entry, in full or in part. If you want to explore the standards further, please use the link(s) provided.

Connections to NSES
Content Standard E: Science and Technology: Understanding about science and technology (5-8)
Content Standard E: Science and Technology: Understanding about science and technology (9-12)
Content Standard F: Science in Personal and Social Perspectives: Science and technology in society (5-8)
Content Standard F: Science in Personal and Social Perspectives: Science and technology in local, national, and global challenges (9-12)
Content Standard G: History and Nature of Science: Science as a human endeavor (9-12)
Content Standard G: History and Nature of Science: Nature of scientific knowledge (9-12)
Content Standard G: History and Nature of Science: Historical perspectives (9-12)
Content Standard G: History and Nature of Science: Science as a human endeavor (5-8)
Content Standard G: History and Nature of Science: Nature of science (5-8)
Content Standard G: History and Nature of Science: History of science (5-8)