“Old Dead Guys”: Using Activity Breaks to Teach History

Abstract

The people and history of chemical engineering surround us: Gibbs free energy, Arrhenius Equation, and Reynolds number. Since these seminal figures appear in almost every classroom lecture, they provide an opportunity for a historically focused activity break. Each activity break provides the students with an image of the historical figure along with biographical information and a discussion of their major accomplishments. The historical context in which the accomplishment occurred, the influence of other historical events on it, and other broad societal influences can also be discussed.