Chemical
Education International, Vol. 2, Issue 1, 18-19, Published in August
3, 2001
Report
on 16th ICCE, Budapest, 5-10 August 2000
|
Peter
E Childs, July 2000 |
Peter
E. Childs
Department
of Chemical & Environmental Sciences, University of Limerick,
Limerick, Ireland
[email protected]
The
International Conference on Chemical Education is held every two
years in different countries. The first one I attended was in 1979
when the 5th. ICCE was held in Dublin. I have been to a number of
them since then but the last one I attended was in 1991 in York.
Since then the ICCE has visited Brazil, Australia, Thailand and
Egypt! The 17th. ICCE will be held in Beijing, China in 2002.
The
ICCE is a big international jamboree: over 500 people were present
in Hungary (including over 200 from Hungary itself) for the 16th.
ICCE (Photos 1 and 2).
There were large groups from the USA and UK, and only one from Ireland.
One problem with these large international conferences is that the
fees are very high ($400) and this discourages teachers and people
from developing countries from attending, especially when added
to the cost of getting there. The attendance from Africa and S.
America was noticeably small.
Members
of the RSC's Education Division can apply for a grant and I would
like to thank them for a grant of 250 pounds towards the registration
fee. Hungary is also fairly expensive to get to and accommodation
is not especially cheap, although meals are very good value.
Whenever
I attend one of these large meetings I ask myself "was it worth
it?" and "what is the benefit of this sort of conference?"
In my opinion the main value of the ICCEs is that they enable local
teachers and lecturers, from the country or region where it is held,
to benefit from hearing a range of international speakers and become
part (for a short time) of the international chemical education
network. Too often, particularly if you attend several successive
conferences, it seems that little new is being said, that the wheel
continues to be reinvented, and the same speakers say much the same
thing conference after conference. However, for the people from
the host country or region this is new and valuable, and this justifies
the expense of such meetings. More effort needs to be made to raise
scholarships for people coming from less-developed countries, so
they feel part of the chemical education scene and can share their
unique contributions.
I
had been looking forward to the plenary lectures by two Nobel laureates:
Sir Harry Kroto (for his discovery of buckyballs) and Paul Crutzen
(for his work on ozone depletion). Harry Kroto talked mainly about
the popularisation of science and the work of Vega Trust, which
he's set up to produce science programmes for TV. He is an enthusiastic
and engaging speaker, as you will know if you saw the BBC TV Horizon
film 'Molecules with Sunglasses' on the discovery of buckyballs.
A research proposal to continue this work was turned down by the
funding council in the UK on the same day that his Nobel Prize was
announced! They later said that this was a mistake and gave him
the money. Paul Crutzen gave an overview of his work on ozone depletion
and the current status of this work (Photo 3).
However,
the best plenary lecture, both in presentation and content, was
that given by V.K. Obendrauf, an Austrian chemistry teacher on 'low-cost
experiments with gases'. This was a tour de force of chemical demonstration
and modern AV technology. He showed how to make and test gases safely
on a small scale, using plastic syringes, backed up by an effective
use of modern technology: Powerpoint slides interspersed with live
video showing the experiments in close-up to an audience of 500.
Very impressive and educative.
There
was whole series of parallel symposia and workshops on a wide variety
of topics, which meant one could only sample a small amount of what
was on offer. I was involved in a symposium on Industry-Education
Cooperation chaired by Peter Towse (Leeds), who I first met nearly
30 years in East Africa. Peter has just produced the latest edition
of Chemical Education Journals, giving details of science/chemistry/education
journals around the world. There was also an extensive display of
posters, and an exhibition on the History of Hungarian Science and
on Justus von Liebig (in German). Another interesting aspect of
the building the conference was held in was a display of sculpture
inspired by chemistry, by a member of the chemistry department at
Eotvos University.
There
was a display of posters on the conference themes, including many
put on by local teachers. The large crowd of enthusiastic and energetic
Hungarian second-level teachers (photos 4,
5 and 6) was
a major feature of the conference. There were also several commercial
displays of equipment and books, not to mention Gordon Woods' periodic
table collection of ties, scarves, tea cloths, mousemats etc.(photo7)
Budapest
is a lovely city to visit and one of the main things to strike someone
from Ireland (or the UK) is the excellent, integrated transport
system. Nearly all the major European cities have a cheap, integrated
system of bus, tram and metro running frequently and making getting
around a painless operation. Instead of scrapping trams in the 1950s
(as in the U.K. and Ireland) these systems were retained, developed
and modernised to provide a clean, safe and efficient public transport
system. I also found the air pollution monitor on a busy junction
quite interesting and a good illustration of urban air pollution.(photo
8)
The
conference tour and banquet was to a vineyard 2 hours drive away,
near Lake Balaton, where the highlight for me was seeing someone
pipette litres of wine out of barrel and then into people's glasses
(photos 9 and 10).
A good example of chemistry in action!
Photo
Captions
1 Some participants in 16 ICCE
2 Folk dance display
3 Prof. Paul Crutzen lecturing
4 Poster display 1
5 Poster display 2
6 Poster display 3: Jack Holbrook and Birgitta
Lindt
7 Graham Woods' Stall
8 Air pollution moniter in Budapest
9 Pipetting wine from the barrel
10 Uri Zoller observes the pipetting technique
Last
updated
16.05.02
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