Initiative
STEM Lab
STEM Lab builds teaching tools — digital and tactile — to improve how K–12 science is taught and what students take away from it.
The challenge
Teachers are asked to make abstract science concrete with whatever is already in the room. The ideas students struggle with most are often the ones that cannot be seen directly — and those are the ones that end up flattened into a diagram on a worksheet.
Equilibrium Bench
Disturb a reaction at equilibrium and watch it respond three ways at once: the molecules, what you would see in the lab, and the maths of Q and K.
Open it in a new tab for more room.
What we’re building
Two kinds of tools for the same lesson. Software, where a simulation can do the work of showing what is happening. And totes — physical kits of materials and the teaching guide that goes with them, which go to a classroom and stay there.
Digital interactives
Browser-based tools a teacher opens from a link. Nothing to install, no account to make.
Classroom totes
Tactile kits: the materials for an activity, packed with the guide for teaching it.
Several representations at once
The interactive below shows the particulate, macroscopic and symbolic views together, so students can connect what molecules do to what they would see and to the maths.
Built against real units
Tools target what is actually taught. The first is built for Honors and AP Chemistry Unit 7.
Intended audience
K–12 science teachers, and the students in their classrooms.
Schools and programs looking for classroom materials they can pick up and use as they are.
Resources and updates
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