A fifth-grader in Kansas City clicked ball-and-stick atoms together in science class and asked her teacher if she’d made a real molecule — he photographed it, sent it to a chemistry professor, and at ten years old she became co-author of a published paper on a structure nobody had ever described
The lesson at Border Star Montessori School in Kansas City, Missouri, was as routine as teaching chemistry is. Kenneth Boehr gave his fifth graders the ball-and-stick modeling kits, the colored spheres and connecting rods that every science class has, and had them build simple molecules: water, carbon dioxide, the standards. Ten-year-old Clara Lazen did not … Read more
