Though school is out for the summer, ninth- and tenthgrade
students at Union Intermediate High School are
burning off energy playing a game of tag on the soccer
field. But that’s not all they’re doing. They’re also synthesizing
and applying key chemistry concepts they’ve just
learned related to the conditions of the early solar system.
They are acting out concepts including the fundamentals
of matter—atoms, ions, and isotopes—while deepening
their understanding of how the solar nebula transformed
into our present solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.