The Association of Chemistry Teachers of Texas publishes three newsletters each year. I hope you are having a good summer. I just got back from Charleston, South Carolina and learned that the slaves used a mortar and pestle to prepare the rice crop for market. First the rice is pounded with the flat end of the pestle to remove the husk and then the rice is pounded with a pointed end of the pestle to remove the bran. Between each pounding the rice is winnowed in baskets. Be sure to look for science on your vacation and let me know what you find. Last summer I attended the Material Science Camp at Michigan Tech and learned how to enamel copper and anodize titanium (purchased from Reactive Metals). I did these activities with my AP chemistry students after the AP test and it was a blast. To anodize Ti, all you need is four 9 Volt battery and a solution of borax. The color that appears on the Ti piece depends on the voltage applied. Check out the chapter on Titanium in technicolor at http://graysci.com/ For the enameling I bought the enamels from Thompson Enamel and a product called Kly-fire. I used a map gas torch to heat the copper and enamel powder so firing took about 2 minutes. I invited the AP art teacher bring her AP students learn how to enamel. What a difference the final products were for the chemistry students verses the art students. Chemistry students just do it and the art students made the piece look stunning with swirls, abstract trees, and works similar to Pieter Mondriaan. It was a great experience and one that will be repeated next year. It is important for chemistry teachers to find ways that science is relevant to the students we teach. Try humor: Why won’t the US accept the metric system? Because we don’t accept foreign rulers. This summer I will attend POGIL training in Salt Lake and ChemEd 09 in Virginia. I hope to share what I learn in the newsletter as well as with my students. Meg Young