ChemBOX is a really exciting project that we launched in 2017.  The boxes contain all the equipment and chemicals needed to run 6 of our ChemBAM experiments with a class of 32 students.

Our ChemBOX2017 project involved 10 schools in the Birmingham area. Each school received one of the boxes and we ran training sessions for the science teachers. We’ve also been invited by lots of the schools to run classroom sessions from Y7 to Y12, taking researchers and undergraduates to work with the school groups.

ChemBOX2017 was very kindly sponsored by the Royal Society of Chemistry, the University of Birmingham and Mark Astbury.

The feedback we’ve had from our first ChemBOX project has been amazing and we’ve been inspired by the fantastic teachers and pupils we’ve met on this project! Here are some of the comments we’ve had from pupils…

“It (chemistry) can be applicable in daily life, something I didn’t realise at the start”

“It was very interactive and it was nice to experience chemistry out of the curriculum”

“I found today’s lesson so interesting and Chemistry used to be my least favourite science… Now I wouldn’t mind taking it for A-Level and further”

Changing perceptions of chemistry

We studied the effect of the ChemBOX project by carrying out free word association activities. Pupils were arranged in groups of 3-4 and given an A3 sheet with the word ‘chemistry’ in the centre. They were then given 5 minutes to write words that they associate with chemistry. The words were collated and grouped and the results for the 20 highest frequency words are shown below.

Before activity			After activity
Word	Frequency		Word	Frequency
chemicals	75		alginate	39
periodic table	58		medicine	33
experiments	45		iron	28
atoms	42		chemicals	22
medicine	41		polymer	21
elements	29		calcium	20
science	28		experiment	20
reaction	24		enjoyable	18
acid	18		fun	17
alkali	17		cancer	14
equations	17		interesting	14
molecules	15		acid	11
bonding	14		benign	11
mixtures	14		gel	11
compounds	13		alkali	9
chemist	12		malignant	9
cosmetics	12		reactions	9
explosion	12		biopolymers	8
fun	12		fluorescence	8
chemical reactions	11		industry	8

While this represents just a small intervention, it’s great to see how the mostly curriculum-focussed words before the ChemBOX activities are replaced by words that are focussed more on applications. There is a lot of evidence that the students enjoyed the activities as well. This is very positive as enjoyment of a subject is known to drive intrinsic motivation.