Scientific investigations play a vital role in teaching and learning the process of science. An investigative task that was developed for pre-university students is described here. The task involves extraction of an enzyme from a vegetable source and its detection by biochemical method. At the beginning of the experiment, a hypothesis is presented…

In daily life, students are allowed to use words such as "more," "some," or "increase-decrease" to describe the relationship between two events. In science, concise description is necessary, which requires the contribution of math. In the summer component of the Science Research Institute program, students integrated…

Teachers use remote labs and simulations to augment or even replace hands-on science learning. We compared undergraduate students' experiences with a remote lab and a simulation to investigate beliefs about and learning from the interactions. Although learning occurred in both groups, students were more deeply engaged while performing the remote…

The central goal of this exploratory study was to characterize the effects of experiments involving different levels of inquiry on the nature of college students' written reflections about laboratory work. Data were collected in the form of individual lab reports written using a science writing heuristic template by a subset of the students…

An educational experiment illustrates the electrolysis of water and copper chloride to middle school science students. The electrolysis cell is composed of filter paper soaked with Na[subscript 2]SO[subscript 4] or CuCl[subscript 2] aqueous solution sandwiched, along with a sheet of platinum foil, between two coin-type lithium batteries. When the…

Gaming, an integral part of many students' lives outside school, can provide an engaging platform for focusing students on important disciplinary core concepts as an entry into developing students' understanding of these concepts through science practices. This article highlights how S'cape can be used to support student learning aligned with the…

This article examines the main strands of thinking about gravity through the ages and the continuity of thought-experiments, from the early Greeks, through medieval times, to Galileo, Newton and Einstein. The key ideas are used to contextualise an empirical study of 247 children's ideas about falling objects carried out in China and New Zealand,…

The Josephson effect, the 50th anniversary of which will be celebrated in 2012, remains one of the most spectacular manifestations of quantum mechanics in all of experimental science. It was first predicted in 1962 and then experimentally verified in 1963. At its most fundamental level the Josephson effect is nothing more than the electronic…

Glass beads are placed in the compartments of a horizontal square grid. This grid is then vertically shaken. According to the reduced acceleration [image omitted] of the system, the granular material exhibits various behaviours. By counting the number of beads in each compartment after shaking, it is possible to define three regimes. At low…

It is often challenging, especially at the beginning of a course, to find good examples where students can actively explore and grapple with the methods of science. We want them to learn the connection between observation, theory, prediction, evidence, and falsification, but to really accomplish this we need platforms for which the students are…

Emphasis on neuropsychiatric frameworks of conceptualizing troubled youth is increasing. This focus leads to more biologically-based interventions. As such, the use of psychotropic medications is skyrocketing, while the utilization of psychosocial strategies is diminishing. Yet overall outcomes seem to be faltering. Admissions to outpatient,…

The synthesis and characterization of two copper(II) complexes, [Cu(deen)[subscript 2]](BF4)[subscript 2] and [Cu(deen)[subscript 2]](NO[subscript 3])[subscript 2] (deen = N,N-diethylethylenediamine), that show interesting thermochromic properties, are described. The subtle alternation of coordination geometry around Cu(II) is responsible for the…

The formation of carbon-carbon bonds is an essential theme throughout organic chemistry. The use of transition-metal catalysts to form carbon-carbon bonds, once relegated to more advanced texts, is now commonly found in introductory organic textbooks. However, commensurate laboratory experiments for first-year organic students are more limited.…

Some peculiarities of the heat transfer through a sample that is heated by the superficial absorption of light energy under continuous uniform illumination are discussed. We explain, using a different approach to that presented in a recent article published in this journal (Salazar "et al" 2010 "Eur. J. Phys." 31 1053-9), that the front surface of…

Separation techniques are usually presented in the undergraduate organic laboratory to teach students how to purify and isolate compounds. Often the concept of liquid chromatography is introduced by having students create "silica gel columns" to separate components of a reaction mixture. Although useful, column chromatography can be a laborious…