Chemical Education Journal (CEJ), Vol. 10, No. 2 /Registration No. 10-17/Received May 21, 2008.
URL = http://chem.sci.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp/cejrnlE.html

Attract Students' Interest in Chemistry through Microscale Experiments

Kazuko OGINO

e-mail: oginokams.odn.ne.jp

Introduction
According to the investigation made by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (MEXT) in 2004, chemistry is the most unpopular subject among high school students. Students seemed to find chemistry uninteresting, difficult to understand, and they think it is useless to study chemistry.

There are two main causes for the bad reputation of chemistry. One is the deteriorated image of chemistry. Chemicals are viewed as the main cause of many environmental problems by the general public. To improve the bad image of chemistry, it is suggested to introduce the concept of green chemistry (GC). The other cause of chemistry for being least popular is the way by which chemistry is taught in some high schools where chemistry is taught without experiments, as experiments are often thought to be less effective for the preparation of the entrance examination to universities. To make chemistry interesting, attractive experiments are essential in chemistry classrooms.

Body of the paper

• Microscale Laboratory
• An Example of Microscale Experiments: Electrolysis
• Discussion
• Acknowledgements
• References