Perryville High School teacher Wendy O'Neal used milk, food coloring and detergent to find the effect of stabilizers on water and oil-based mixtures.

Elementary and middle school teachers don't need expensive labs to teach chemistry.

With a little ingenuity and some household items, teachers can stir up plenty of laboratory fun.

That was the message of Operation Chemistry, a weeklong, hands-on chemistry workshop for fourth to eighth grade science teachers. The workshop was held July 10-14 in Magill Hall at Southeast Missouri State University.

Seven teachers from Cape Girardeau, Jackson and Perryville attended the $150 a person workshop.

The workshop is part of a national program sponsored by the American Chemical Society and the National Science Foundation.

This marked the first year for the workshop in Cape Girardeau.

Dr. Sharon Coleman of Southeast's chemistry department conducted the workshop.

Coleman was assisted by Judy Gau, who teaches fourth grade science at Franklin School in Cape Girardeau, and Nancy Fischer, chairman of the science department at Valle High School in Ste. Genevieve.

Science teachers in elementary and middle schools have to teach units in a variety of sciences.

Chemistry sometimes gets little attention because teachers think they need a lot of laboratory equipment, Coleman said.

She hears plenty of excuses. "It takes too much time, costs too much money."

But Coleman said some common household items make great substitutes for the high-priced equipment.

Some substitutes: a soda bottle for a beaker, lemon juice for citric acid, coffee filters for filter paper, straws for medicine droppers, clothes pin for a test tube holder, and red cabbage juice for a universal indicator to determine the acid content of things.

"We use a lot of plastic, peanut butter jars, anything that comes in a clear container," Gau said.

"This is not a sit down, paper and pencil type of thing," she observed.

Using popcorn, a beaker and two balls, Coleman illustrated density. She moved the beaker around in a circular fashion. The heavier ball sank to the bottom, while the lighter one moved to the top.

Workshop participants found out that milk, food dyes and some dish-washing detergent offer a great way to illustrate fat content.

They poured whole, skim and 2 percent milk into different petri dishes and then added food coloring.

The water-soluble dyes dispersed less in the whole milk, which had the most fat. When the detergent was added, the various food coloring began mixing with the milk.

"You can play," Coleman encouraged as the teachers gazed at the kaleidoscope of mixing colors.

"They are all activities I can take back to my classroom and use right away," said Marilyn Peters who teaches sixth, seventh and eighth grade science at St. Vincent de Paul School in Cape Girardeau.

"Anytime you can get the kids excited about science, you make it better," she said.

Fellow participant Mary LeGrand, a sixth grade teacher at Alma Schrader School, said it is important to have hands-on activities for the children.

She said the average school teacher will spend $1,000 a year of his or her own money to buy materials for the classroom. So low-cost chemistry experiments are a big plus, she said.

Julie Antill, a fifth grade teacher at Jefferson School, said students enjoy the experiments. "It is learning by experience instead of just absorbing," she said.

The same could be said of the teachers at the workshop.

The teachers spent part of a day testing the starch content of everything from marshmallows to cucumbers.

"Don't eat any of these things," Fischer warned playfully as the iodine drops turned various foods a dark blue.

"We are all having fun. We are having as much fun as they are," Gau said.