The Grapes of Class: Teaching Chemistry Concepts at a Winery

Abstract

Nonscience majors often believe that the concepts and techniques in chemistry have little relevance to someone outside the “ivy-covered walls of academia”. The challenge for science instructors is to develop and implement lessons that present science in a way that will capture the interest of the nonscience major, while remaining rigorous enough to satisfy the college’s and program’s student-learning outcomes. We have used an activity, a trip to the vineyard, to engage nonscience-major college students in a “laboratory” using scientific instruments in a real-world setting. Students were given a tour of the vineyard and shown the process of wine making. At various points on the tour, each student was guided in the usage of laboratory equipment to determine sugar content, pH, specific gravity, alcohol content, and to perform random sampling. This activity introduced the students to chemistry instrumentation as well as general science concepts.