Marine pollution from oil spills, vessel discharges, and ballast water poses significant challenges to environmental sustainability and maritime operations. This research explores the potential of bioremediation techniques, focusing on oil-degrading microorganisms, biofilters, bioreactors, and marine plants, to address these issues. By integrating…

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs)have been shown to result in increased science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) persistence, but such experiences are rarely available for first-year STEM students. This work outlines the development and integration of a CURE into a year-long honors general chemistry laboratory…

We describe here a 4 hour experimental session based on reaction monitoring of the degradation of an organic pollutant via a Fenton-like reaction. An aqueous solution of p-nitrophenol is treated with hydrogen peroxide and magnetite, and the progress of the reaction is monitored by UV-vis spectrophotometry and/or gas chromatography using an…

Students reasoning with data in an authentic science environment had the opportunity to learn about the process of science and the world around them while developing skills to analyze and interpret self-collected and secondhand data. Our results show that nearly 50% of the treatment group responses were accurate when describing the reason for…

A laboratory experiment was designed and implemented in a STEM teaching laboratory at Michigan State University to engage students in an activity that not only introduced an innovative nitrate detection technique but also addressed one of the negative impacts of climate change, that is, the eutrophication of water bodies. The adverse effects of…

The purpose of this study is to examine changes in pre-service science teachers' entrepreneurship mindsets during engineering design-based activities. A holistic single-case study was used in the study. Twenty-eight pre-service teachers carried out engineering design-based activities (five weeks, 20 hours) in the science teaching laboratory…

An integrated laboratory experience using metal--organic frameworks (MOFs), a nanoporous and crystalline extended solid material composed of metal cations and organic linkers, was developed and adopted for upper-division, major-level chemistry and biochemistry students. In this laboratory, students were guided through the facile solvothermal…

Millions of people do not have access to clean drinking water; thus, cost-efficient water treatment systems are vital. Chemists, environmentalists, technicians, and engineers will be the professionals making breakthroughs in this industry. This laboratory experiment aims to introduce undergraduate students to the removal of pollutants from water…

The undergraduates in the major of Environmental Science and Environmental Engineering frequently ignored the importance of identifying pollution sources for water environment monitoring and knew little about the techniques of identifying pollution sources. Thus, a laboratory experiment which focused on pollution sources identification in a water…

Catalysis is not only one of the most crucial principles of Green Chemistry but also one of the most used industrial strategies to improve yields and to shift to more environmental-friendly processes. Due to the great importance of catalysis, we propose a laboratory activity related to heterogeneous catalysis courses (upper and undergraduate…

A two-week exercise on the Flint, MI water crisis was developed for high school and undergraduate students in introductory chemistry courses. During the first week of the exercise, students learn the chemistry of lead contamination while reviewing concepts learned previously in the course. During the second week, the students participate in…

The chemistry laboratory is an impactful platform for introducing inquiry and developing science practice skills. We designed a short lab course to introduce incremental levels of inquiry, also to interconnect and integrate different domains of chemistry. Indigo dye was the central theme of this short course wherein students synthesized indigo,…

This book uses the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, as a touchstone for the importance and value of including place-based education in the social studies curriculum. Whitlock scrutinizes this local environmental issue to not only drive critical inquiry in the classroom, but also to show how the curriculum can propel valuable social change in the…

The contamination of wastewater with metals and the use of biotechnologies to remove them is commonly discussed in theoretical biology, microbiology and biotechnology classes aimed at undergraduate students. This work introduces an easy, economical and safe practical laboratory class related to this topic. The practice consists in performing batch…

This experiment combines analytical techniques of solid-phase extraction (SPE) and gas chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC-QTOF-MS) to determine organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in river water as a means to develop and improve student understanding of the use of GC-QTOF-MS for qualitative and quantitative analysis. In…