Did you ever hear the story of Darth Phelan the Wise?  It’s not a story the Classics Quiz Team would tell you. It’s a STEM legend. Darth Phelan is a Dark Lord of the STEM, so powerful and so wise, she can use the Force of Chemistry to influence the Second Year scientists to create… titrations.  Yes, STEM strikes back after all that wooly nonsense about art and debating!  And the First Order of business for Second Year Science students under the new Junior Cycle Specifications is to get them hands-one experience and encourage them to ‘learn by doing’. Ms. Phelan had 2A up in the laboratory doing titrations which, sadly, have nothing to do with midi-chlorians and a lot to do with volumetric measurement, or as Sheldon might say: ‘a common laboratory method of quantitative chemical analysis that is used to determine the unknown concentration of an identified analyte.”  This will all lead up to the students’ first CBA (Classroom Based Assessment) a hall mark of the new Junior Cycle where assessment itself is a learning process.  (Don’t worry!  There is still a ‘proper’ exam, too!) Well, the kids certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves,  like those giddy Jedi younglings early in Episode III, and everyone who took part got to take home a little vial of their favourite nitrated explosive analyte!

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