Education in organic chemistry is highly reliant on molecular representations. Students abstract information from representations to make sense of submicroscopic interactions. This study investigates relationships between differing representations: bond-line structures, ball-and-stick, or electrostatic potential maps (EPMs), and predicting partial…

Electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions are common in the organic chemistry laboratory. These reactions, while ubiquitous, use corrosive reagents and halogenated or hydrophobic solvents that produce expensive and hazardous waste streams. The carboxylation of phenols (Kolbe-Schmitt reaction), although aqueous, typically involves conditions…

A [beta]-lactam, the core structure unit of clinically important antibiotics such as penicillin and cephalosporin, is one of the most commonly encountered four-membered heterocycles in organic chemistry and is widely used in medicine and biochemistry. The Kinugasa reaction, a copper­(I)-catalyzed cycloaddition of a terminal alkyne with a nitrone,…

A deep understanding of organic chemistry requires a learner to understand many concepts and have fluency with multiple skills. This understanding is particularly necessary for constructing and using mechanisms to explain chemical reactions. Electrophilicity and nucleophilicity are two fundamental concepts to learning and understanding reaction…

This article presents computational chemistry exercises that are designed to be incorporated into an undergraduate physical chemistry course. This activity teaches computational chemistry as it is performed in higher-level research (in a command-line environment and executed on a high-performance computing cluster) to provide students with a…

This review describes a computational chemistry exercise aimed at enhancing the understanding of upper-division undergraduates in organic chemistry and physical chemistry regarding the structures and aromaticities of cyclobutadiene and cyclooctatetraene. This exercise exposes students to chemical problems that require computational methods as a…

The concepts taught in an undergraduate physical chemistry course are directly related to the molecular processes governing climate change, yet the connections between quantum mechanical molecular properties and global warming are rarely made explicit. To improve student knowledge about climate change, we developed a three-part activity that…

The crystalline sponge method allows for direct and precise molecular structure determination of liquid and gaseous targets and thus has been recognized as a revolutionary breakthrough in crystallography. To expose undergraduates to this cutting-edge technique, we have developed a comprehensive laboratory experiment with reaction conditions and…

This study investigates students' cognitive resources for identifying symmetry elements using survey data collected from 39 inorganic chemistry students from twelve undergraduate inorganic classes at universities across the United States. We propose a framework that leverages students' knowledge of symmetry elements as a manifold of cognitive…

An understanding of basic organic chemical reactivity is key for many biosciences students. The reactivities of different carbonyl groups affect their function in many biomolecules. A practical class, the two-step synthesis of paracetamol, has been devised to illustrate the electrophilic reactivities of carbonyls, which was covered in the…

The application of chemistry concepts in biological settings plays an important role in the interdisciplinary field of drug discovery and development. This is true for molecular docking, where an understanding of intermolecular forces and noncovalent interactions is useful for rational drug design and development. Here we report the design and use…

The field of biosensors is a burgeoning area of research and employs a large number of chemistry graduates. The impact of strip tests in detecting coronavirus was palpable during the recent COVID-19 pandemic and will further drive the biosensor industry. Despite their common usage, a coherent introduction to the basics of sensing remains missing…

In undergraduate science education, laboratory courses stand as essential cornerstones of experiential learning. Chemistry laboratory courses offer students unique hands-on experiences that bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application. The journey through the undergraduate chemistry curriculum is paved with a series of…

Representations are ubiquitous in chemistry. They are part of the chemistry language instructors use to communicate chemistry phenomenon to students. Literature calls in support of learning with multiple representations, but there is a pre-requisite for students to learn from a single representation. In this exploratory study, 1086 students in…

The article describes a new version of a demonstration experiment for the Maxwell distribution. In the first part students analyse the applicability of the Gaussian distribution to the projection of the particle velocities in the suggested experiment. Further, students observe two-dimensional distribution of particles by the modulus of velocity in…