Chemistry merit badge gets a new formula

Chemist Kristin Omberg felt annoyed as she dug through her parents’ garage, searching for a nongalvanized iron nail and copper sulfate. The items were surprisingly hard to come by. Yet Omberg’s daughter needed both to earn her chemistry merit badge with Scouting America (called Boy Scouts until last February). A key experiment asked Scouts to observe an iron nail reacting with copper sulfate solution. Omberg wondered, “How do other people do this when they don’t have their grandparents’ garage nearby?”

Soon after, Omberg laughingly relayed her frustration about finding the items to fellow Scout mom, freelance technical writer, and chemist Lisa Balbes. “I oversee all the ranks, all the merit badges” for Scouting America, Balbes tells Newscripts. Serendipitously, she and other chemists in Scout leadership had been hoping to update the chemistry merit badge requirements. Omberg was a shoo-in to head the group of volunteers authoring the rewrite.

Starting this year, Scouts across the US will do a new suite of experiments to earn the chemistry merit badge. With the rewrite, Omberg’s team of six chemists—including Balbes—removed some outdated experiments and added modern safety protocols. They also explicitly tied new and old experiments to specific nonchemistry merit badges Scouts complete.

“It’s a philosophical change from the way that last one was written, which was very discipline-centric,” Omberg tells Newscripts. “We want to get kids excited about chemistry. We want them to recognize that chemistry is all around them.”

Omberg points to tying chemistry to the Scout cooking merit badge. Now, cooking is used to teach chemistry. Scouts perform a classic Maillard reaction by using different methods to cook dulce de leche or onions. “There were whole troops doing that experiment over a campfire,” Omberg says with a laugh.

Scouts can also learn about metals with kitchen-torch flame tests. “The colors of the different flames, that’s such classic chemistry,” Balbes says. Luckily, the team realized that troops could burn supplements purchased in the vitamin aisle of grocery stores—no need to rummage through Grandma’s shed for exotic salts.

And where would a camper be without their trusty nylon tent? Committee member and retired chemist Paul Winston told Newscripts he’s excited about adding the “nylon rope trick” as an optional badge activity. “I first saw that at a DuPont exhibit in the 1965 [New York] World’s Fair,” he says. It amazed him that “you can pull nylon out of an interface of two liquids.” Seeing that trick and completing the chemistry merit badge in the 1960s inspired Winston to become a chemist. He hopes the updated requirements will inspire more kids today.

One thing that’s staying the same is the icon on the badge: a retort flask. It’s one of the only badges that still carries its original image from 115 years ago. “Maybe we should go the other way and try to get chemists to use retort flasks again,” Balbes quips.

When hearing about the various experiments Scouts will complete, this Newscriptster was thrilled to learn that juice from a red cabbage changes hues with pH.

Bryan Balazs, a retired chemist who was also on the committee to update the chemistry merit badge for Scouting America, tells Newscripts that it’s a good experiment to do at home. “It’s a safe and visual demonstration of the principles of the acidity or basicity of a solution,” he says.

The instructions from the new, soon-to-be-released manual for the chemistry merit badge say the indicator can be made by blending red cabbage with water and then filtering out the solid bits. Mixing this solution with common kitchen ingredients of varying pH, such as acidic lemon juice or alkaline baking soda, makes a rainbow of colors.

It was a delight for this Newscriptster to watch the liquid shift from purple (near neutral) to fuchsia (more acidic) to azure (more basic). The Scouts’ instructions promise vibrant greens and yellows with increasing alkalinity, but that experiment will have to wait for a future grocery run to buy something more basic than baking soda: bleach.

Fionna Samuels wrote this week’s column. Please send comments and suggestions to newscripts@acs.org.