Common over-the-counter medicines can be an exciting entry point for introducing students to the interesting chemistries that they encounter in their daily lives. In this inquiry-based activity, students are tasked with using a list of given supplies and information about four medications (Aspirin, Tums, Pepto-Bismol, and Tylenol) to design three…

We describe a guided-inquiry laboratory experiment for instrumental analysis in which our students test an improved protocol for the recycling of silver chloride to produce nontoxic waste. Students are provided with samples of silver chloride that they created as waste products in a previous lab experiment and tasked with performing a stepwise…

Although teaching laboratories offer students the opportunity to act and think like chemists, in many cases students simply follow written procedures to generate predetermined outcomes. In recent years, there has been a movement toward inquiry-, problem-, and discovery-based learning. In a similar vein, the first-semester introductory organic…

Teaching blackbody radiation within the framework of astrophysics can motivate students to learn and obtain a more profound and qualitative understanding of the subject. In this paper we present a teaching module that intertwines teaching blackbody radiation via the continuous spectrum of hot objects, especially the stars. The module's approach…

This paper describes investigative homework with apples, aiming to contribute to the primary-school students' understanding of density and conditions leading to floating and sinking. The assignment represents an opportunity for individual autonomous learning of physics and adoption of established scientific concepts through practical activities…

Inquiry-based labs have been shown to greatly increase student participation and learning within the biological sciences. One challenge is to develop effective lab exercises within the constraints of large introductory labs. We have designed a lab for first-year biology majors to address two primary goals: to provide effective learning of the…

Animations of molecular structure and dynamics are often used to help students understand the abstract ideas of chemistry. This qualitative study investigated how the features of two different styles of molecular-level animation affected students' explanations of how sodium chloride dissolves in water. In small group sessions 18 college-level…

Diffusion and osmosis are central concepts in biology, both at the cellular and organ levels. They are presented several times throughout most introductory biology textbooks (e.g., Freeman, 2002), yet both processes are often difficult for students to understand (Odom, 1995; Zuckerman, 1994; Sanger "et al.", 2001; and results herein). Students…