Instructive, inexpensive, and environmentally friendly laboratory syntheses of two highly luminescent copper(I) complexes CuI(PPh[subcript 3])[subscript 2](py[superscript R]) (py[superscript R] = pyridine, 4-cyanopyridine) are described for second-year/upper-division undergraduate inorganic chemistry students. Both complexes exhibit bright…

This paper shows how a freely downloadable and powerful software package, "SMath Studio," can be used to model physical systems in physics teaching. The software can form the basis of lecture demonstrations by teachers or can be used individually by students working in an educational environment or on their own home computers.

A spreadsheet-based exercise for students is described in which they are challenged to explain and reproduce the disparate temperature dependencies of the heat capacities of gaseous F[subscript 2] and N[subscript 2]. For F[subscript 2], C[subscript p,m] increases from 300 K, reaches a maximum at 2200 K, and then decreases to 74% of the maximum…

Magnetic resonance is a powerful technology that has had a major impact across the physical, life, and medical sciences, from chemistry to medical imaging, with ever-expanding applications in new areas as diverse as mining and food science. It is, however, also a difficult subject to teach, as the theory is complex and requires some familiarity…

The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate science teaching and assessing what is learned via using concept maps. Concept mapping is a technique for visually representing the structure of information. Concept mapping allows students to understand the relationships between concepts of science by creating a visual map of the connections. Concept…

In this organic chemistry laboratory experiment, students are guided through a series of exercises to understand the behavior of compounds during liquid-liquid extraction. Aspects of density, structure, solubility, acid-base theory, and pK[subscript a] are all incorporated into activities that students complete in groups. After using their initial…

This article aims to introduce the lanthanides (also known as the lanthanoids) to teachers and their students. The lanthanides are not mere "footnotes" at the bottom of the periodic table but make up a group of interesting and unique metallic elements. They and their compounds have widespread technological applications that have become…

An introductory guide to deducing the mechanism of chemical reactions is presented. Following a typical workflow for probing reaction mechanism, the guide introduces a wide range of kinetic and mechanistic tools. In addition to serving as a broad introduction to mechanistic analysis for students and researchers, the guide has also been used by…

In the digital age, the integration of technology has become a ubiquitous aspect of modern society. These advancements have significantly enhanced the field of education, allowing students to receive a better learning experience. "Digital Tools and Solutions for Inquiry-Based STEM Learning" is a comprehensive source of scholarly material…

Many students find the transition from first-year general chemistry to second-year organic chemistry a daunting task. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is their lack of a solid understanding and appreciation of the importance of some basic concepts and principles from general chemistry that play an extremely critical role in…

This article comes from a question asked by a student of mine: if the Sun radiates energy in the form of electromagnetic waves, could they shift the Earth from its current orbit on a suitable timescale? The answer to such a question is apparently obvious and trivial. Nevertheless, it requires an instructive reasoning and interesting estimates of…

The phenomenon of precession is necessary to explain the motion of footballs, gyroscopes, tops, the Earth, and many other interesting physical systems, but it was very hard for me to understand as a student and is very difficult to teach to students now. Many explanations of precession in physics textbooks are highly mathematical and hard to…

We explicitly show that the well-known transmission and reflection amplitudes of planar slabs, obtained via an algebraic summation of Fresnel amplitudes, are completely equivalent to those obtained from transfer matrices in the scattering approach. This equivalence makes the finite periodic systems theory a powerful alternative to the cumbersome…

Natural selection and other components of evolutionary theory are known to be particularly challenging concepts for students to understand. To help illustrate these concepts, we developed a simulation model of microevolutionary processes. The model features all the components of Hardy-Weinberg theory, with population size, selection, gene flow,…

One of the greatest mysteries of ancient times is how the Egyptians managed to raise huge obelisks using very simple technology. This remarkable task has puzzled engineers for thousand of years. After failing to raise an obelisk with simple machines, such as levers and pulleys, a team of modern engineers solved the mystery using a sandpit and the…