How to learn from a disaster

On Feb. 3, 2023, Nicole Dickson-Karn couldn’t look away from the television. A Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous chemicals had just derailed and caught fire about 20 km from Dickson-Karn’s hometown in eastern Ohio, where her mother still lives. “It was impossible for me not to pay attention,” she says. Dickson-Karn , an analytical chemistry teaching professor at the Ohio State University, began doing what any scientist might—she began digging through the data to make sense of the disaster. As she collected air, water, and soil sample data posted by the US Environmental Protection Agency and Norfolk Southern in real time, Dickson-Karn realized that “this is an analytical chemistry problem.” So she decided to use the rich heap of information to craft a learning experience for the undergraduate students in her instrumental analysis lab. The three-part case study Dickson-Karn built follows the actual timeline of the East Palestine, Ohio,