The curriculum for undergraduate Agricultural Engineering does not usually include much laboratory practice. In order to address this, here we propose the design of a practical class on legume-rhizobia symbiosis, using an interdisciplinary approach that takes elements from botany, agriculture, and microbiology. The students perform an assay to…

This article describes two sets of experiments designed to enhance the understanding of colloidal systems. These experiments were designed as a part of the theme "Colloids: Where Science Meets Engineering" taught in the Department of Chemical Engineering and additionally offered to physics, chemistry, and materials science departments as…

The Chain Experiment competition has been held successfully for 6 years in Poland and is attracting growing interest. The competition provides participants with a task that involves designing and constructing a contraption that is an element in a chain of events that are based on various physical phenomena. The contraptions are then linked…

This paper reports the quantification of Ca, Mg, and Fe as micronutrients in different vegetables (spinach, sugar beets, and carrots) from raw and processed samples. Simple extraction procedures, titrations, and spectrophotometric analysis were used to determine the amounts of micronutrients before and after cooking. From the obtained results, an…

The development of a QR code as a barcode label contains information about the item to which it is attached. However, information on QR code development in engineering science laboratories is still limited. The aim of this research is to design the QR code lab manual for laboratory work in polytechnics engineering science course. In addition, the…

We report on the study of student difficulties regarding a heat engine in the context of a Stirling cycle by the method of measurement. An in-class test about a Stirling engine with a regenerator was taken by three classes, and the students were asked to perform one of the most basic activities--calculate the efficiency of the heat engine. Our…

This paper presents an insight on the pedagogy and strategic design of the organization of the four experimental subjects of the Chemical Engineering Degree Curricula at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (GIQ-ETSII-UPM). Outcome-based learning is applied, focused on the student's work, centering explicitly in Experimental Design outcomes.…

Among the new educational tools and new ways of teaching/learning of the last 20 years, educational approaches based on constructivism are of great interest because they offer the possibility for students to build scientific concepts from experimental observations. Cooking is truly a universal topic--it can be considered a true multidisciplinary…

An experimental procedure is presented that was developed by fifth-year chemical engineering and industrial chemistry undergraduates at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro doing the discipline on Experimental Organic Technology. The aim of this study was to apply the solvatochromic effect of the dye Nile Blue chloride to the characterization…

This research aimed to explore the effects of a virtual lab (VL) and a Microcomputer-based Lab (MBL) on students' performance in scientific modeling. A web-based virtual lab and a low-cost MBL were proposed to help first-year engineering students build scientific models. Empirical research was done in a slope motion experiment. The participants…

The Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Granada have endeavored to make a number of high quality experiments to familiarize our students with our latest research and also scale-up of processes. A pilot-scale wastewater treatment plant was set-up to give students a close practical view of the treatments of effluents by-produced in…

A detailed study of learning and teaching (L&T) of chemical engineering distillation to a mixed-ability small class of 13 students who are ordinarily full-time in-house employees in industry is reported. The course consisted of 9 × 2-h lectures (18 hours) and 9 × 2-h tutorials (18 hours). It was delivered over nine business days "in…

Although environmental radioactivity is all around us, the collective public imagination often associates a negative feeling to this natural phenomenon. To increase the familiarity with this phenomenon we have designed, implemented, and tested an interdisciplinary educational activity for pre-collegiate students in which nuclear engineering and…

In recent years, accreditation standards for international engineering education have led to a dramatic rise in the use of outcome-based education at universities. In this system, enticing new undergraduate students to science and engineering, although challenging, is the first important step toward building students' career competencies. An…

Practical education in chemical engineering has drawn increasing attention in recent years. This paper discusses two approaches to teaching and learning about experiments among upper-level chemical and pharmaceutical engineering majors in China. On the basis of years of experience in teaching chemical and pharmaceutical engineering, we propose the…