Teacher: Niek Slooter (Read more about his biography here)
Dates for 4-Week Course:
October 13 to November 7, 2025
Times for Live Sessions: Monday through Thursday, Starting at 9:15am MT (which is 11:15am ET and 8:15am PT). Each live session lasts between 50 and 70 minutes.
Course Description
The properties of acids and bases will be explored through our senses and natural indicators such as cabbage juice as well as litmus paper to roughly indicate the pH. We will discuss how acidic and basic substances are used in our world and in our body. For example, how these are related to digestion, other chemical processes like food preservation, and how industries use these principles.
During the third week the relationship between acids, bases and salts are discovered with different experiments. We will start using the concepts of atoms, molecules and ions. From there we go into detail of how hydrogen and oxygen play a key role in acids and bases, and how the concentration of these ions influence the pH. In the last week we will do calculations on concentrations, why the pH is a logarithmic scale and how to calculate the pH from different solutions.
Throughout this block many hands-on experiments will be done. Chemistry kits will be sent to the students to do all the experiments and assignments themselves at home.
Topics covered:
- Acids; their properties and usage in our daily life
- Bases; their properties and usage in our daily life
- Salts; varieties, their properties and usage in nature and industries.
- Solubility & concentrations
- Saturation, precipitation and super-saturation
- Crystal formation, and exothermic processes.
- Atoms, ions and molecules
- Calculations of concentrations and pH.
If you register your student for a science program and live outside the US, we will send you an invoice for an additional $30-$50 for your science kit shipping, depending on your location.
