An introductory general chemistry laboratory course was developed to provide an authentic research experience in environmental chemistry. First- and second-year students learned general chemistry concepts and laboratory skills in the context of snow chemistry while participating in the course-based undergraduate research experience. Students were…

In this laboratory experiment, students performed thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) coupled with mass spectrometry (MS) of herbaceous materials (TGA-MS) and learned to analyze mass-loss curves, as well as identify common fragmentation ions. The experiment is the first one to present the application of TGA in a currently relevant topic: biomass…

Laboratory reports written in the style of a standard scientific article are commonly used to assess student learning in biochemistry laboratory courses. While most students can complete the Materials and Methods or Results sections successfully, many have difficulty with the Introduction and Discussion. They fail to place their data in a larger…

The ability of certain organometallic reagents to react via 1,2- or 1,4-addition to an a,ß-unsaturated ketone is a fundamental example of regioselectivity at the second-year undergraduate organic level. The following two experiments were designed to demonstrate this preference by exploiting carvone as an inexpensive chiral, nonracemic substrate.…

An undergraduate experiment for the organic laboratory is described that utilizes microwave heating to prepare 5- substituted 1H-tetrazole derivatives through a (3 + 2) cycloaddition between aryl nitriles and sodium azide. The reaction mixture is analyzed by thin layer chromatography. The products are purified through an acid-base extraction and…

This paper describes an undergraduate laboratory experiment where students study the heating behavior of magnetic nanoparticles in the presence of alternating magnetic fields. Average score on the post-test was 45±12% for students who completed the lab online, versus 43±11% for those doing the activity hands-on. Post-test scores were significantly…

In the years 2015-2018, the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research and the Italian Ministry of Defense proposed the joint initiative "Space for Your Future. The ISS: Innovatio, Scientia, Sapientia" in partnership with the Italian Space Agency. It was a competition addressed to secondary school students and aimed at…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, mandatory changes were required in the field of education, as in many other fields. One of these fields is a teacher training programme, which includes teaching practice. It has become of great importance that pre-service science teachers, who frequently include experiments in their teaching practices in face-to-face…

Background: Scientific thinking is an essential learning goal of science education and it can be fostered by inquiry learning. One important prerequisite for scientific thinking is procedural understanding. Procedural understanding is the knowledge about specific steps in scientific inquiry (e.g. formulating hypotheses, measuring dependent and…

At the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic surprised the world, affecting activities that promote attendance, including abruptly impacting the education area. Educational institutions, from preschool to university, were required to adopt alternative teaching methods to continue their activities. Distance learning has been adopted by educators…

A lot of new science has been inspired by common phenomena and even by old traditions practiced in our daily lives. Eventually, after deep exploration, this may engender unexpected new technologies. In this paper, inspired by the wearing of a traditional cloth called a "sarong," by the community in South East Asian countries and others,…

So many fundamental physics problems involve rigid body rotation that mastery of the subject is essential to many science and engineering undergraduate degrees. Rigid body rotation is typically taught in introductory mechanics courses and while students are generally comfortable with the corresponding kinematic equations, torques and moments of…

A simple apparatus consisting of a plastic syringe coupled with a U-tube has been constructed. This setup is filled with water to trap air in one arm of the U-tube. A change in the volume of the enclosed air causes a change in its pressure that is indicated by the difference in the water levels. Boyle's law is shown by a linear relation between…

Biocompatible and biodegradable block copolymers composed of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and aliphatic polyester are a class of promising biomaterials. Herein, a teaching experiment was designed to furnish undergraduates with a reliable method to synthesize an amphiphilic poly([epsilon]-caprolactone)-PEG-poly([epsilon]-caprolactone) (PCL-PEG-PCL)…

A glass of water covered with a disk with a hole in it can be turned upside down without spilling the water in the glass, provided the hole is small enough and the disk is pressed against the rim of the glass. A quasistatic numerical simulation based on hydrostatic pressure and surface tension of water was used calculate the critical hole diameter…