Write the lab notebook's opinion of the student who writes nothing down until the bell.Angle: the notebook remembers what the student will not.
Oxygen keeps a list of everything that could not have happened without it today. Write the list.Fact: oxygen makes up a fifth of the air, and it is the gas that burning requires.
An egg goes into a hot pan clear and comes out white. Write the change as the egg.Angle: write only what can be seen, second by second, and leave the why as a question.
A cake rises in the oven while nobody watches. Write the report of the baking soda inside it.Fact: carbon dioxide released by baking soda expands the batter and gives a cake its texture.
A candle burns down at a birthday dinner. Write where the wax went.Fact: combustion is a reaction with oxygen from the air.
A cast-iron pan is left wet in the sink overnight. Write what it finds on itself in the morning.Fact: rust is an iron oxide, formed when iron reacts with oxygen in the presence of water.
A cook forgets the baking soda. Write the flat cake's complaint.Angle: what was supposed to happen in there, and did not?
An egg goes into a hot pan clear and comes out white. Write the change as the egg.Angle: write only what can be seen, second by second, and leave the why as a question.
An oven has an opinion of what it does all day. Write it.Fact: some reactions produce heat, and others need heat before they can happen.
Baking powder carries its own acid. Write the moment water wakes it up.Fact: baking powder holds baking soda and acidic ingredients that are activated by adding water.
Sugar sits in a hot pan and turns brown. Write the minute it stops being plain sugar.Fact: caramelization is the browning of sugar. It gives a butter-like flavor and a brown color.
Vinegar meets baking soda. Write the first ten seconds as one of the bubbles.Fact: baking soda reacts with an acid such as vinegar and releases carbon dioxide gas.
Write a detective story in which the only clue is the smell of a bread crust.Fact: in cooking, Maillard reactions can produce hundreds of different flavor compounds.
Write a recipe the way a chemist would: what goes in, what comes out, and what can never be taken back out.Fact: a chemical reaction is a process that transforms one set of substances into another.
Write a slice of bread's account of turning brown.Fact: bread browns by the Maillard reaction, in which amino acids and sugars react when heated.
Write an argument between a seared steak and a spoonful of caramel over whose browning is whose.Fact: the Maillard reaction involves amino acids. Caramelization is the breakdown of sugars by heat.
Write one breakfast as two lists: what changed for good, and what was only stirred.Angle: toast cannot be untoasted. Can cereal be unpoured?
Write the diary of a packet of yeast from the cupboard to the oven.Fact: baker's yeast turns the sugars in dough into carbon dioxide, which raises the bread.
An element speaks 15
Carbon writes two letters home, one as a diamond and one as a pencil. Write both.Fact: diamond and graphite are both carbon. Diamond is the hardest natural substance; graphite is soft.
Choose an element found in your kitchen and write its day as a character with one fixed habit.Angle: the habit is its chemistry. Iron rusts. Helium will not join in. Carbon turns up everywhere.
Copper carried a message for you today without your noticing. Write its account of the trip.Fact: copper is a good conductor of electricity, and most of it goes into electrical wiring and cable.
Gold has sat in a riverbed unchanged for a very long time. Write what it thinks of iron.Fact: gold is chemically unreactive and often appears in nature in its pure form.
Helium was seen at the Sun before anyone found it on Earth. Write its side of the story.Fact: helium was first observed during a solar eclipse in 1868 and named after helios, Greek for the Sun.
Hydrogen is the simplest element there is. Write how it introduces itself to the others.Fact: a hydrogen atom has one proton and one electron. Its name is from the Greek for water forming.
Mercury is the only metal at the party that cannot stand still. Write the party.Fact: mercury is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature.
Oxygen keeps a list of everything that could not have happened without it today. Write the list.Fact: oxygen makes up a fifth of the air, and it is the gas that burning requires.
Sodium and chlorine meet and become table salt. Write the wedding speech.Fact: salt is made of sodium and chlorine. Sodium is never found free in nature.
Two elements are stuck in an elevator: one reacts with nearly everything, one with nothing. Write the ride.Angle: sodium and helium, or choose your own pair. Who speaks first?
Write a job interview in which an element explains why it should be the one inside a pencil.Fact: graphite, a form of carbon, is used in pencils.
Write a sign's night over a diner, told by the neon inside the tube.Fact: real neon lights are reddish-orange. Neon does not react with other elements.
Write an element's complaint about the nickname people gave it.Fact: mercury's symbol, Hg, comes from a Greek word meaning liquid silver, or quicksilver.
Write helium's reply to every element that asks it to join a compound.Fact: helium is a noble gas. It is very stable and does not react with other elements.
Write iron's story of arriving on Earth inside a meteorite.Fact: in ancient times people mined iron from meteorites, which could be up to 90 percent iron.
Mixing and unmixing 15
A baked cake would like to be flour, eggs and sugar again. Write its sorrow.Angle: a mixture can be unmixed. What has reacted has become something else.
A chemist puts one dot of a mixture on a strip of paper and waits for it to come apart. Write the wait.Fact: chromatography separates a mixture into its parts. Its name is from Greek for color and to write.
A coffee filter decides who passes. Write its morning shift.Fact: a coffee filter separates the coffee from the grounds. Only the liquid can pass.
A jar holds sand, salt and water. Write the plan to get all three back, in the order that works.Fact: a mixture can be separated by physical methods such as filtration, freezing and distillation.
A perfume maker long ago heats petals in a pot and catches what rises. Write the first time it works.Fact: tablets from about 1200 BCE describe perfume making, early evidence of distillation.
A spoonful of salt disappears into a pot of water. Write its goodbye, and its plan to come back.Fact: salt dissolves in water to form a solution, and a mixture can be separated again by physical means.
Air is a mixture nobody notices. Let it introduce itself.Fact: air is a solution too: nitrogen gas with oxygen and smaller amounts of other gases dissolved in it.
Bronze is copper and tin that agreed to stay together. Write the agreement.Fact: by combining copper with tin, people made bronze, an alloy stronger than copper.
Oil and water share a bottle and refuse to speak. Write what each says to the cap.Angle: shake them and they pretend for a minute. Then what?
One drop of seawater becomes fresh water. Write the journey.Fact: when salt water turns to vapor and condenses again, the water that forms is not salt water.
Sand is stirred into a glass of water and keeps to itself. Write the sand's side.Fact: sand mixed into water keeps the same properties it had outside the water.
Trail mix, a salad and a pocketful of coins are all mixtures. Write the meeting where they compare notes.Fact: the substances in a mixture keep their separate properties.
Two clear liquids are poured together and the glass turns cloudy. Write the surprise of the solid that was not there before.Fact: a precipitate is a solid that forms in a solution during a chemical reaction.
Write a sieve's speech at its retirement after forty years in one kitchen.Fact: in filtration a filter holds back the solid matter and only the fluid passes through.
Write a story whose hero must tell a mixture from a new substance with only a spoon, a filter and a sunny windowsill.Angle: if it can be picked, filtered or dried apart, it was only a mixture.
A safe lab 15
A bottle with no label sits at the back of a shelf. Write the meeting about what to do with it.Angle: nobody opens it. The whole story is the argument.
A fume hood hums in the corner all day. Write what it has kept out of the room.Fact: a fume hood draws air in from its open front, so fumes are carried away from the person working.
A new student ties back long hair and rolls up loose sleeves before anything is lit. Write the getting ready as a ritual.Angle: slow it down. Each small act gets a sentence.
Every lab period ends at the sink. Write the sink's account.Angle: who washes up, who rushes, who comes back for the thing they forgot.
The lab at night: the room is locked and everything is back where it belongs. Describe it.First line: The stools were up, the gas was off, and the goggles hung in a row.
Mercury used to fill thermometers. Write the old thermometer's retirement letter.Fact: mercury is highly toxic, and safer materials are now used in most thermometers.
The sash of a fume hood is the lab's window. Write a week of what it sees from behind the glass.Fact: a fume hood is an enclosure with a movable sash window on one side.
The teacher says stop and every hand comes off the bench. Write the silence and what it was for.Angle: nothing went wrong. Something almost did.
Tell the first day in a school lab as the pair of goggles nobody wants to wear.Angle: the goggles have seen things. They keep it short.
Write a lab partner who reads every label twice, and the day it mattered.First line: She read it once, then again, and then she put the bottle back.
Write the fire blanket's long career of never once being needed.Angle: it hangs by the door and hopes to stay folded.
Write the lab notebook's opinion of the student who writes nothing down until the bell.Angle: the notebook remembers what the student will not.
Write the lab's rule sheet as if each rule had been added after one particular Tuesday.Angle: nobody is hurt. Only messes, smells and one ruined notebook.
Write the labels for five jars in an invented lab: what each holds and the one jar it must never sit beside.Angle: invented jars only. The pairs that must not meet are the plot.
Write the story of a spill that was small, dull and handled exactly right.Angle: make the calm the interesting part.
How it works
A chemistry writing prompt works best when the chemistry can be seen. These start in a kitchen, give one element a voice, pull mixtures apart and visit a lab. Facts come from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Wikipedia.
Read the full guide
Reactions you can watch in a kitchen
Fifteen prompts stay by the stove: vinegar meeting baking soda, told by one of the bubbles; sugar turning brown in a pan; a cast-iron pan left wet overnight. The line under most names what is happening, so the story can call the reaction by its right name.
One element as a character
Fifteen prompts hand the page to an element. Helium turns down every invitation, gold has an opinion of iron, and sodium and chlorine get a wedding speech. Fifteen more take mixtures apart, and the rest are scenes in a school lab where the rules are kept.
Give the element one fixed habit and never let it break it.
Write what can be seen first. The explanation can wait a paragraph.
Questions and answers
What is a good writing prompt for chemistry class?
One with a reaction in it that the writer has seen. A cake rises in the oven while nobody watches. Write the report of the baking soda inside it. The fact under the prompt says which gas does the lifting.
How do you write an element as a character?
Take one true property and make it the character's habit. Mercury is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature, so it cannot stand still at a party. Neon glows reddish-orange. Hydrogen is the simplest element there is.
What is the difference between a mixture and a chemical reaction?
In a mixture the substances keep their own properties and can be separated by physical means, such as a filter. In a reaction they become different substances. One prompt has a baked cake wish it were flour, eggs and sugar again.