511th MEETING Of the NORTHEAST TENNESSEE SECTION Annual Education Meeting Date: Tuesday September 21, 1999 Location: The Holiday Inn, Exit 7 Bristol, VA; Meeting Rm B Speaker: Dr. John Fortman, Wright State University Title: Demonstrations of Everyday Applications of Chemistry Abstract: Live and videotaped chemical demonstrations will be used to illustrate the science behind many useful materials in everyday life. Various demonstrations relate to such things as metals, building materials, soaps and detergents, fuels and combustion, antifreeze, batteries and electronics, electricity and light, air pressure and valves, rubber, foam plastics, heat shrink plastics, foods, medicines, hot packs, cold packs, superabsorbent diapers, carbonated beverages, and weather prediction. John J. Fortman is Professor and Associate Chair of Chemistry at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, where he has taught all levels of freshman chemistry as well as senior inorganic chemistry for 30 years. Dr. Fortman received his B.S. from the University of Dayton in 1961 and his Ph.D. in physical inorganic chemistry from the University of Notre Dame in 1965 where he was a Shell Scholar for two years. He had a part time appointment at the Aerospace Research Labs at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base from 1966 to 1970 and was a visiting associate professor at Purdue in 1973-74. Dr. Fortman is a two-time recipient of the outstanding teaching award of the College of Science and Mathematics, and the 1991 recipient of the WSU presidential award for teaching. In 1993 he received the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching and in 1994 he shared The College's Collaborative Teaching Award for his work in developing a new multi-discipline science sequence for elementary education majors. In addition to course content and organization, his educational interests include chemical demonstrations and teaching analogies. With Rubin Battino he does at least fifteen chemical demonstration outreach programs reaching more than 8,000 high school of junior high students per year, and has produced three sets of videotapes which contain a total of ten hours of chemical demonstrations for use at middle school through college levels. He does demonstration workshops for teachers on pyrotechnics and on simple demonstrations using readily available and inexpensive materials. He is the author of a series of thirteen articles featuring pictorial analogies which began appearing in the January 1993 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education.