The flame test always gets ‘em!

Jon Wing, a science teacher at Marysville Early College High School, received a distillation kit through the Ohio Corn & Wheat sponsored grant program. Wing used the kit to share lessons from Feed the World’s Energy and ethanol unit with his 11th and 12th grade Environmental Science students. In the unit, students are invited to explore the process of distilling ethanol from corn mash.

“The students were totally engaged with all the steps in the process of distilling ethanol,” Wing said. “They would check the mash each day when they walked into class and helped problem-solve the filtering process before putting the solution into the distillation flask. Of course, they were huddled around me and the fume hood to test the final product and we actually timed 3 different classes’ distillate. They were all within about 10 seconds of each other, with the 2 mL of ethanol burning for a maximum of 58 seconds.”

These lessons align with state science standards on Energy resources, specifically renewable and alternate energy sources like ethanol and its efficiency. Ignite your students’ learning by using Feed the World’s Energy and Ethanol unit in YOUR classroom!