The determination of the speed of sound in air is a classical experiment, usually performed with a resonance tube apparatus. The measured value can be checked against Eq. (1), which describes the temperature dependence of the speed of sound in dry air. A modern implementation of this speed of sound investigation uses an Arduino Uno microcontroller…

The global positioning system (GPS) must be familiar to every user of a smartphone as a way to locate one's position on Earth to within several meters. The constellation of orbiting atomic clocks equipped with radio transmitters allows receivers on Earth to determine their own position by measuring the travel times of radio signals from multiple…

In a 1993 book review, E. Pearlstein asks, "Why don't textbook authors begin their discussion of magnetism by talking about magnets? That's what students have experience with." A similar question can be asked, "Why don't professors have students measure the force between permanent magnets in introductory physics labs?" The…

This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of an inquiry-based laboratory for sophomore-level organic chemistry into a mostly cookbook, existing laboratory curriculum. For the laboratory, students were required to generate their own procedures and use their own recorded data from prior laboratory assignments to identify an…

Accuracy and precision are measures of experimental error and are fundamental to most chemical analysis laboratory classes. Assessment of accuracy and precision is often based on the comprehension of the results generated by students rather than on the quality of the data generated. This activity focused on developing a chemical analysis…

As part of its STEM programming initiatives, Community Boating, Inc., the nation's oldest public sailing organization introduced an "Introduction to Microscopy" course merging principles of scientific investigation with analytical techniques using compound light microscopes. Boston's Charles River provided the environmental setting for…

Data collected in many biology laboratory classes are on ratio or interval scales where the size interval between adjacent units on the scale is constant, which is a critical requirement for analysis with parametric statistics such as t-tests or analysis of variance. In other cases, such as ratings of disease or behavior, data are collected on…

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has led to widespread lock-down strategies that force universities to perform all educational activities remotely. In this context, laboratory lessons pose a significant challenge. Here, I present an on-line tool that simulates the kinetics of chemical reactions. Enzymatic mechanisms can be easily modeled and followed…

Water analysis is an excellent interdisciplinary topic for project-based learning. An undergraduate course was designed to engage the senior undergraduate chemistry students in a real-life experience. In this course, students developed methodologies based on published American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) methods for the measurement of…

Collecting data on learners' performance in different chemistry contents and analysing them to identify their knowledge and understanding in related content areas is a major task of Chemistry Education Research. The data collection process on the learners' content knowledge and understanding of content knowledge requires a standard measuring tool.…

An undergraduate-level Computational Chemistry project was incorporated initially into a Physical Chemistry course and then into the laboratory curriculum in the subsequent application. Before the introduction of the project, the lectures covered quantum chemistry, spectroscopy, and kinetics while simultaneously including computational chemistry…

In undergraduate research settings, students are likely to encounter anomalous data, that is, data that do not meet their expectations. Most of the research that directly or indirectly captures the role of anomalous data in research settings uses post-hoc reflective interviews or surveys. These data collection approaches focus on recall of past…

Many national science frameworks (e.g., Next Generation Science Standards) argue that developing mathematical modeling competencies is critical for students' deep understanding of science. However, science teachers may be unprepared to assess these competencies. We are addressing this need by developing virtual lab performance assessments that…

We describe an educational activity that can be done by using smartphones to collect data in physics experiments aimed to measure the oscillating period of a spring-mass system and the elastic constant of the helicoidal spring by the dynamic method. Results for the oscillating period and for the elastic constant of the spring agree very well with…

This article provides an overview of the instructional activity implemented to introduce the authors' first-grade students to the concept of measuring, collecting, and recording temperature data as part of a unit on weather. The activities introduced involved approximately one week of instructional time. However, the application of the skill…