The simple demonstration presented, herein, involves the combustion of acetylene liberated from the rapid hydrolysis of 0.50 g of calcium carbide. The unsaturated hydrocarbon formed burns with a yellow sooty flame in air. This acetylene-air flame being visually attractive is often misused by those attempting to showcase their illusory magical…

We provide an update on the "electrochemistry designette" in relation to its pedagogical effectiveness to students and experiential learning. We have previously proposed that the designette be applied as an assessment tool to measure the students' competence on electrochemical principles through a series of objective metrics. Based on…

This action research case study explored the ability of three high school chemistry students to grow in their understanding of nature of science (NOS) during its explicit-reflective inclusion in two unit chapters on bonding (ionic compounds followed by covalent molecules). Students completed a pre, post and delayed Views of Nature of Science Form…

This study aimed to investigate changes in the understandings of the Nature of Science (NOS) of preservice chemistry teachers after participating in the explicit, reflective, and contextual NOS teaching. The sample of the study consisted of nine preservice chemistry teachers who attended scientific research methods course at the undergraduate…

This study reviewed the green and sustainable chemistry education (GSCE) research that provided training at the tertiary level from 2000 to 2024. The Web of Science and ERIC databases were screened using title and abstract review. In total, 49 studies were analysed. The analysis instrument has two main parts, namely, general characteristics of the…

The change in enthalpy of a chemical reaction conducted at constant pressure is equal to the heat of the reaction plus the nonexpansion work of the reaction, ?H = qP + w[subscript additional]. After deriving that relationship, most general and physical chemistry textbooks set w[subscript additional] = 0 to arrive at the claim that ?H = qP, and…

This study discusses how textbook educational approaches concerning Le Châtelier's principle (LCP) may hinder student comprehension and prediction of chemical equilibrium disturbances. Firstly, after summarising students' LCP erroneous assertions/explanations, a categorisation of the potential barriers that may originate student misunderstandings…

Students in chemistry often demonstrate difficulty with the principle of resonance. Despite many attempts to mitigate this difficulty, there have been few attempts to examine the root cause of these issues. In this study, students were assessed for their perception of Kekule structures based on perceptual learning theory, which is grounded in…

In this study, diagnostic worksheets adopted from the Royal Society of Chemistry and microscale chemistry activities were employed to investigate teacher trainees' understanding of chemical compounds. The framework for the study was hinged on the constructivist theory. Participants in this study were 36 1st-year undergraduate teacher trainees of…

A didactic sequence is proposed for the teaching of chemical equilibrium law. In this approach, we have avoided the kinetic derivation and the thermodynamic justification of the equilibrium constant. The equilibrium constant expression is established empirically by a trial-and-error approach. Additionally, students learn to use the criterion of…

Finding the best ways to introduce quantum physics to undergraduate students in all scientific areas, in particular for chemistry students, is a pressing, but hardly a simple task. In this paper, we discuss the relevance of taking into account lessons from the history of the discipline and the ongoing controversy over its interpretations and…

In learning chemistry at the entry level, many learners labor under misconceptions about the subject matter that are so fundamental that they are typically never addressed. A fundamental misconception in chemistry appears to arise from an adding of existing phenomenal concepts to newly-acquired chemical concepts, so that beginning learners think…

Why is chemistry so difficult? A seminal paper by Johnstone (1982) offered an explanation for why science in general, and chemistry in particular, is so difficult to learn. He proposed that an expert in chemistry thinks at three levels; the macro (referred to as the observational level in this article), the sub-micro (referred to as the molecular…

Graphing subjects in chemistry has been used to provide alternatives to verbal and algorithmic descriptions of a subject by handing students another way of improving their manipulation of concepts. Teachers should therefore know the level of students' graphing skills. Studies have identified that students have difficulty making connections with…

Many studies suggest that students have difficulties in learning acid-base concepts. This study presents some conflicts in the textbook descriptions of these concepts and proposes these to be the cause of the students' difficulties. This is especially true regarding the description of the relationship among the Arrhenius, Brønsted-Lowry, and Lewis…