Students, in the School for the Blind, continue to demonstrate creativity, resourcefulness, and adaptability during a time of both in-person and online learning. Students, in the high school Chemistry class, were challenged with modeling specific energy levels within an atom, called orbitals, which exist in different 3D shapes in relation to the central point of an atom, the nucleus.
In-person high school students built tactile orbital models using simple modeling clay and toothpicks, one student going as far as inserting some marbles into her orbital model to represent electrons. Though online students didn’t have these materials on hand, they were zoomed in for the activity and used their creative writing skills to describe shapes and positions of these phenomena, doing an excellent job of painting a word picture of their orbital models. Through this activity, the strangely complex, submicroscopic world comes into plain focus without aid of any lens or microscope and can be experienced and understood through the hands and the imagination.