A hands-on symmetry project is proposed as an innovative way of teaching point groups to undergraduate chemistry students. Traditionally, courses teaching symmetry require students to identify the point group of a given object. This project asks the reverse: students are instructed to identify an object that matches each point group. Doing so…

A competitive educational guessing game "Orbital Battleship" which reinforces Madelung's and Hund's rules, values of quantum numbers, and understanding of periodicity was designed. The game develops strategic thinking, is not time-consuming, requires minimal preparation and supervision, and is an efficient and fun alternative to more…

Search the Internet for the qualities of a good teacher and you'll find that an entire range of ideas are offered. Having spent half a working life as a science teacher and the remainder as a science education consultant (and, for a period, an Ofsted team inspector!), the author would like to attempt to tease out what makes a "good science…

The storyline of operas, with historical or fictional characters, often include potions and poisons. This has prompted a study of the chemistry behind some operatic plots. The results were originally presented as a lecture given at the University of Minho in Portugal, within the context of the International Year of Chemistry. The same lecture was…

ScienceComics project originally involved a set of theatre performances that sought to highlight the importance of materials by exploring what happens when one uses the "wrong" material. As part of this early work, two plays were created that featured a young alien girl, called Selenia, who could change materials. In this article, the…

Problem solving is a critical skill for engineering students and essential to development of creativity and innovativeness. Essential to such learning is an ease of communication and allowing students to address the issues at hand via the terminology, attitudes, humor and empathy, which is inherent to their frame of mind as novices, without the…

Cartoons are part of a much larger effort by chemical educators to introduce activities to enhance learning and student participation. There are a variety of cartoon types used in teaching that have been evaluated and discussed within the chemical education community including caricatures, comics, and concept cartoons. This article focuses on the…

Unmotivated, underachieving students pose a huge challenge for teachers. One way to motivate and stimulate student interest in a topic is to use humor. Humor can help students make new connections in learning and improves retention of information (Garner 2006). In this article, the authors describe how they integrated art and literature with…

Middle school students can be apprehensive toward the subject of science because, "we give them the message that science is the most important of subjects" (Flannery 1993). Why not consider using humor proactively as an effective teaching resource in the science classroom? The use of appropriate content-related humor can initiate and liberate…

A wonderful way to engage science students is to make them think a demonstration is not turning out the way the instructor intended. Basically, throw a little humor into teaching, and they will be hooked. Described in this article is a demonstration that uses Milk of Magnesia (MOM) as a visual and humorous method to review equilibrium chemistry…

Provides a general overview of humor and its use in educational settings and makes specific suggestions to educators who want to include or increase its use in their classroom. Discusses characteristics, benefits, categories, student perceptions, stages of humor, sources and forms of humor, and pacing. (DC)