College Students Teaching Chemistry through Outreach: Conceptual Understanding of the Elephant Toothpaste Reaction and Making Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream

Informal chemistry education/chemistry outreach is ubiquitous with the chemical enterprise. However, little research has focused on the planning, implementation, or evaluation of these events. Results from a previous study suggest that college students involved with collegiate chapters of the American Chemical Society and Alpha Chi Sigma are heavily involved with chemistry outreach, and their most frequently discussed purpose is to teach chemistry content to their audiences. Given this goal, it is timely to investigate how well these college students, who are acting as teachers in outreach environments, understand the chemistry content embedded in the activities they implement during their events. Presented in this paper are the results of a content analysis of semi-structured interviews (N = 37) focused specifically on student understanding of the elephant toothpaste reaction and making liquid nitrogen ice cream at a general chemistry level. Results show prevalent misunderstandings and misconceptions of the content despite the sample being composed primarily of junior and senior chemistry majors. Implications for teaching in both formal and informal environments are presented in light of these findings, as well as potential future investigations of the teaching and learning occurring during chemistry outreach.