In this age of rapidly changing video images, MTV, and fast-moving commercials, both the high school and college educator, as never before, require tools that capture attention, instill curiosity, arouse questioning, and generate new challenges for students. Teachers who have incorporated ideas from NASA and the space program into their chemistry lessons have noted that students enjoy learning about material regarding, for example, the chemistry of the space shuttle. Discussion of the propulsion system on the shuttle not only raises technical questions but also, if the discussion is properly directed, ties chemistry to many social and economic issues.We will show, for example, how the reactions that describe the combustion of the shuttle's solid rocket fuel teach students about stoichiometry, thermodynamics, and acid-base chemistry and force them to address a host of environmental concerns.
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