CRISPR-Cas9 is revolutionizing how we conduct scientific research, treat disease, and develop new crops. The widespread impact of this genome-editing technology makes it critical for undergraduate students to understand and engage with this new tool. In this article, we describe a multi-week lab module that teaches undergraduates how to design…

Virtual laboratories and simulations have emerged as innovative solutions for science teaching. However, existing resources have various limitations and constraints including cognitive load/mental burden and limited coverage of all necessary steps in scientific inquiry, focusing mainly on the experimental simulation. To bridge this gap and address…

At the end of the 18th-century, Charles Coulomb developed an apparatus to study the force between two electrified beads which allowed him to obtain his famous Coulomb's law. Today, as one of the most fundamental outcomes in classical electromagnetism, his result is revisited in most high school physics courses, where students are asked to…

This paper shows how a freely downloadable and powerful software package, "SMath Studio," can be used to model physical systems in physics teaching. The software can form the basis of lecture demonstrations by teachers or can be used individually by students working in an educational environment or on their own home computers.

In recent years, with the more powerful functions of smartphones, the use of sensors integrated by mobile phones as an auxiliary tool for physical experiment teaching has become more popular. Combined with the related mobile phone apps, people easily can develop and expand the physical experiment contents of mechanics, optics, acoustic phenomena,…

Many introductory astronomy courses include concepts related to basic stellar properties. In general, these are concepts that originate from the human perception of starlight. This observational aspect is not easy to incorporate in the classroom. We explore if these concepts could be developed using the built-in data in a planetarium software.…

Unlock the Future of Education with "Learning with AI" Discover how artificial intelligence is transforming education with "Learning with AI," a pivotal co-publication from Johns Hopkins University Press and the National Science Teaching Association. Authored by Joan Monahan Watson, this essential guide empowers K-12 educators…

This paper examines the Torricelli law for the flow of liquid from a small drain hole in a container. It shows how the system can be modelled using either a traditional calculus-based approach or a non-calculus step-wise computer method appropriate to the background of the student group. An experiment to measure the head of out-flowing liquid as a…

The use of symmetry is widespread in chemistry, as it is used for predictions of the number of allowed and forbidden absorptions in electronic, vibrational, and rotational spectroscopies; for predictions of the combination of atomic orbitals to produce molecular orbitals; and in many other chemical applications. One critical step in these…

In this paper it is demonstrated how the free, and easily downloadable, software package called SMath Studio can be used to set up a model of alpha-particle scattering. The basic physics of the motion of an alpha-particle in the nuclear coulomb field is used to produce a simple stepwise computer algorithm which, in conjunction with a novel set of…

Excluded-volume interactions are ubiquitous to modeling the average size of polymers in solution. This paper shows how simulations can be used by students to explore the emergence of mathematical scaling relations from excluded-volume interactions. Simulations provide robust visual representations of the system, and can be used to investigate a…

A bachelor's degree program in chemistry typically starts with basic concepts in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Those principles are very important because they pave the ground for future advanced studies and, therefore, one needs to present them in a clear but rigorous way. One example is provided by the mathematical notion of an iterative…

Fractals are geometric objects used to describe irregular shapes that have a fractional dimension and commonly appear in nature. Although several proposals for the study of perfect fractals at the basic level are present in the literature, only few proposals for the study of real fractals exist, which does not seem reasonable considering the…

Although virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) techniques have been used extensively in specialized laboratories, only recently did they become affordable, reaching wider consumer markets. With increased availability, it is timely to examine the roles that VR and AR may play in teaching structural biology and in experiencing complex data sets…

Here, we present an interdisciplinary educational project intended for high school chemistry that is focused on the establishment of a mathematical model to describe the relationship between conductivity and concentration, while linking chemistry to mathematics with the help of computer software. The project was designed to help high school…