A BERMUDIAN chemist, Dr. Carol A.S. Brevett, PhD, is receiving wide acclaim for a unique educational tool she has created.

Simply put, it is a card game, just like an ordinary deck of cards, 49 in number aimed at making the learning of chemistry easy. It is designed for students aged eight and up, and it's what she calls a 'grow with me game'.

I had to confess that my head began to hurt me at the outset when Dr. Brevett and her ten-year-old son began talking to me about the periodic table. I did not know what they were talking about.

But when they started putting their cards on the table, displaying the symbols for water, chlorine, gold, hydrogen, oxygen, and so on, my eyes began to pop, and soon I realised I was not so dumb after all. And by the same token, neither was I all that bright.

I did recall that H2O was water and I scored my first point.

Be that as it may. The chemistry card game, which has been given the trademarked name of Atommate by Dr. Brevett, is designed to be a fun and easy way to learn chemistry. Beginners can easily learn the names, symbols and elements of the periodic table as well as what's involved in making chemical compounds; intermediate students will learn how to combine the elements to form molecules and compounds; and more advanced students can use the cards to enhance their understanding of reactions ranging from simple to complex.

No only was I intrigued by the card game, but just as much about who its creator is and was, if I may put it that way.

She is the eldest of the two children of St. George's town councillor Dr. Erskine E. Simmons, of The White House, St. George's and the late Marie Simmons. A graduate of the Berkeley Institute, she went to Queen's University in Ontario where she gained a BSc (Hons.) in Chemistry in 1983, and in 1988 Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa awarded her a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry.

For the next two years she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois and from 1990-1991 was an instructor and postdoctoral researcher at Iowa State University.

Over the past 11 years, Dr. Brevett's professional history as a senior industrial chemist can only be described as extensive. At present she lives in Maryland and is involved with a California-based firm engaged in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) projects probing the fate of organic chemicals in the environment.

Dr. Brevett explained that NMR is a version of the more commonly known MRI used by physicians on patients. She also spends considerable time and energy addressing technical conferences and trade shows.

Dr. Brevett is the wife of Dr. Renford Brevett, PhD, an industrial engineer who is on the faculty of Lincoln University in Oxford, Philadelphia. They met while students at Iowa State U.

The idea for the Atommate card game was conceived when her son, Renford, Jr., was in third grade at his school. She was invited there to give a demonstration in chemistry.

SHE observed that children were engaged in card games; they were also viewing card games in some television cartoons, and in one particular game, "they were memorising facts that were really equal in number, difficulty and level of complexity to the number we have on the periodic table".

Added Dr. Brevett: "That's what made me realise kids could learn chemistry and how to put atoms together to form molecules."

She spent the next three years developing the cards, doing classroom demonstrations and figuring out what would work best at various grade levels.

She also reflected how after graduating from Iowa U., she spent a year there teaching university-level remedial chemistry to students who had either failed chemistry or who had had no chemistry but needed a credit in order to graduate.

Some students had difficulty grasping the basic concepts of chemistry, thinking it was confusing or not interesting. Also for the sake of her own three sons, she embarked on a way to make teaching of chemistry fun, interesting and entertaining.

She found a manufacturer for Atommate. Chemists were most responsive and could see how helpful the cards could be. Her web site connected with school groups, home schools and other chemists.

"I did a demonstration with some Bermuda school teachers and students from the Berkeley Institute. One afternoon we sat down and the students did not want to stop playing upon learning how different chemical compounds would react," explained Dr. Brevett.

Her web site is www.atmmate.com.

Dr. Brevett took time out from her lightning visit to Bermuda to grant me an interview. She came home to attend the marriage of her father to the principal of the Berkeley Institute, the former Mrs. Michelle Grant Gabisi. She said as an aside, that her chemistry teacher at the Berkeley was the then Mrs. Gabisi.

"Now my father is engrossed with chemists right, left and centre," she remarked.