The rise of virtual and online education in recent years has led to the development and popularization of many online tools, notably three-dimensional (3D) models and augmented reality (AR), for visualizing various structures in chemical sciences. The majority of the developed tools focus on either small molecules or biological systems, as…

Given the importance of self-healing polymers for chemistry education, herein, we introduce our latest research results in self-healing materials based on thioctic acid into undergraduate chemistry laboratory. In this experiment, a natural small molecule, thioctic acid (TA), and a few other commercially-available reagents have been used to make a…

Traditional engineering textbooks are substantially limited by approaches relying on analytical solutions where most of the applications are described by differential equations without simple analytical solutions. An alternative is to design a textbook around computer-program-based simulations, where the simulations progressively evolve through…

This paper examines the use of Virtual Reality (VR) at Swiss secondary schools. Despite many years of research, no well-founded data are available on the effects of the technology on children's learning success. It is assumed that VR is compatible with the learning theory of constructivism through the possibility of immersion, interaction, 3D…

This work describes how molecular simulation of polymerization reactions can be used to enrich introductory polymer or material science courses to give students a deeper understanding of free-radical chain and stepwise growth polymerization reactions. These simulations have proven to be effective media for instruction that do not require material…

This paper describes a computational exercise at undergraduate level that demonstrates the employment of Monte Carlo simulation to study the conformational statistics of flexible polymer chains, and to predict solution properties. Three simple chain models, including excluded volume interactions, have been implemented in a public-domain computer…