Chemistry of Everyday Things

Rationale

The social experiences of teenagers can be a bridge to contextualizing content and instruction in a science classroom. The opportunity to bear out the students' curiosities about their environment and the world exist when the curriculum in its design departs from the norm of using Standards only. This departure helps to drive new approaches to content and instruction. Metaphors and analogies that bespeak the real events in students' lives can promote discourse and understanding that traditional instructions miss. Social trends that manifest in clothing, dress, hairstyle, and grooming do serve as a springboard to engage students in the dialogue of science with a social lens. Exploring the science behind social trends, like tattooing, body piercing and hair weaves can be the turnkey for getting students to broaden their social self to the domain of science. The objective would be to use the students' interest to build relevancy and connectedness to chemistry concepts taught in the classroom. While there are challenges inherent in merging the social realm of teenage life to science, the rich, thorough articulations of my students making sense of their physical world in context with science concepts taught is an awesome academic exchange.

The diverse hairstyles worn by young African Americans are creative, provocative and historical. Whether sporting traditional African braid styles, donning sculptured Afros or modeling modern day weaved couture, these young people unknowingly translate the political and social experiences of African Diasporas in this country. In the 1960s, young African American men and women paraded their natural, kinky hair without reservation to symbolize their racial identities. Decades later, young people would attempt to subdue their natural look by straightening their hair in order to gain greater access to economic opportunities, e.g. jobs, economic markets, schools. Today, African American lyrists and singers like India Arie and Erykah Badu boldly transition from locks to bald crowns bolstering their individuality, with great exclamation. While the contemporary hairstyles of young African American students can be the nexus that connects them to their culture and individual historical identities, it also serves to bear out their relationship to "popular culture."

Popular culture is temporal. It is a culture where, they (young people), themselves are commodified. It reports what is cool in the moment for music, hairstyles, clothing, dance, speech and other social practices. Within this domain, young people scout for the "latest and most hip" in commercial markets. The hair care industry is keen to this phenomenon, particularly amongst African American youth. Today, more than ever, there are a plethora of hair care products and supplies in U.S. markets. These products include hair oils, moisturizers, shampoos, relaxers, as well as styling products and accessories, such as hair dryers, diffusers, flat irons and curling irons. Dominating retailers such as Helene Curtis, Proctor and Gamble, and Alberto-Culver, garnish billions of dollars each year in revenue from sales to the American public. Local retailers stock their shelves with the varied styles and colors of wigs, weaves, and other hair care products, cashing in on the material culture.

Reportedly, in 2008, African Americans spending response to the hair care industry was $435 billion in revenue. This rose by 16.9 percent in 2009 to $507 billion. ¹ The products that generated the greatest revenue in the hair care industry were hair weaves. ² Many of these weave products, imported from areas outside the U.S., are Indian human hair or synthetic. Though men and women of "all ethnicities" are purchasing and wearing synthetic microfibers hair or natural fiber hairs weave products, young African American females are the burgeoning market. Thus, the distribution and marketing of these products is predominately to the African American community. On billboards, in magazines and in TV ads, industry advertisers construct images that display socially popular and accepted young African American females with hairstyles achieved with their products, only. Very often, these young females will buy hair weaves and hair extension without regard to the significance of their purchases. The socioeconomic ramifications as well as the environmental impacts are important considerations. Fundamentally, the young people cannot make informed decisions about the purchase, because they lack knowledge of the product, its composition, construction and the impacts. The opportunity to teach young people basic chemistry concepts and processes in relationship "to the hair they wear" provide many teachable moments. How these products are crafted to mimic natural hair is the catalyst to introduce students to the chemistry of polymers.