Students often enter chemistry laboratory courses with a well-documented disconnect between their experiences outside the classroom and the procedures, concepts, and techniques that occur in our courses. Strong base, weak acid titration experiments are present in general chemistry laboratories but also relate to foods our students are familiar…

Natural products play a critical role in modern organic synthesis and learning synthetic techniques is an important component of the organic laboratory experience. In addition to traditional one-step organic synthesis laboratories, a multistep natural product synthesis is an interesting experiment to challenge students. The proposed three-step…

Remote and virtual laboratories are increasingly prevalent alternatives to the face-to-face laboratory experience; however, the question of their learning outcomes is yet to be fully investigated. There are many presumptions regarding the effectiveness of these approaches; foremost amongst these assumptions is that the experience must be "real" to…

Much research has shown the benefits of additional anatomical learning and dissection beyond the first year of medical school human gross anatomy, all the way through postgraduate medical training. We have developed an interactive method for teaching eye and orbit anatomy to medical students in their ophthalmology rotation at Duke University…

A guided-inquiry exercise conducted in both the lecture and laboratory components of a college introductory chemistry course for non-science majors is described. The exercise gave students the opportunity to independently determine the relationship between the temperature of water in an aluminum soda can and the intensity of implosion upon placing…

It is challenging for biomedical engineering programs to incorporate an indepth study of the systemic interdependence of cells, tissues, and organs into the rigorous mathematical curriculum that is the cornerstone of engineering education. To be sure, many biomedical engineering programs require their students to enroll in anatomy and physiology…

Outlines a laboratory activity which takes place at the zoo and helps make some of the important aspects of evolution more concrete. Includes the principles of adaptation, variation within a species, types of evolution, and predicting future evolutionary trends. Provides a student worksheet. (RT)

Materials science can be taught by applying organic light-emitting electrochemical thin-film devices and in this method students were allowed to make a light-emitting device by spin coating a thin film containing ruthenium (II) complex ions onto a glass slide. Through this laboratory method students are provided with the opportunity to learn about…

Discusses procedures for teaching basic soil morphological concepts using soil cores collected along a toposequence. Describes materials and methods for collecting, laboratory use of cores, and student evaluation results. Shows a table of criteria used to describe soils for profile descriptions. (RT)

Describes laboratory procedures for observing the progressive change deciduous leaves undergo prior to abscission. Outlines the starch test, sugar test, extraction and chromatography of pigments, and experimental results. States that obtained results enable the events of leaf senescence to be correlated with the carbohydrate economy of a tree in…

Offers suggestions for the development of a laboratory assistant program. Includes guidelines and factors to consider in the selection process and in the training program. Discusses the advantages of this type of program for both students and teachers. (ML)

Describes a course used to teach freshwater ecology to graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Michigan Biological Station. Explains how students receive an introduction to lake ecology and work on applied resource management questions concerning local lakes and streams. Gives case study examples. (SB)

Discusses a research project of testing detergents that resulted from students' classroom observations of and questions about water pollution and suds. Outlines procedures and responsibilities necessary for conducting the experiment. A sample student data sheet is included. (RT)

Summarizes the capabilities of a computer program related to forest fertilization. Provides a description of input parameters, some sample exercises, software specifications, and availability information. Additional references are listed. (Author/RT)

Describes two simple procedures allowing students to experiment with living membranes and to relate their results to fundamental membrane structure. Provides instructions for determining the effects of temperature and organic solvent stress on cellular membranes, and spectrophotometric analysis. (RT)