A Hands-On Approach to Understanding Electrochemistry for Middle and High School Students

Electrochemistry plays a crucial role in our everyday lives. It allows us to power our phones and cars and allows for the real-time monitoring of blood glucose levels. While electrochemistry is of vital importance and is a long-established field of chemistry, it is often neglected in modern curricula for STEM courses. Herein, we show that hands-on electrochemical experimentation can be approachable and attainable for students as young as sixth grade and can help facilitate learning of redox chemistry. The proposed experiments allow students to better understand electron transfer and general redox chemistry as well as gain invaluable laboratory experience, which can also contextualize what electrochemistry in a research lab may look like. We propose a simple method for the fabrication of platinum electrodes, instruction on how to introduce electrochemistry and cyclic voltammetry and how to probe the parameters that affect an electrochemical measurement. Using this hands-on teaching approach, middle school aged students will be able to put together research-quality posters and demonstrate their understanding of the presented topics.