The chemical experiment in this study is specifically created for undergraduate students studying energy and the environment. The target of the experiment is for students to comprehend the deactivation mechanism of the Ce/TiO[subscript 2] catalyst by oxides of phosphorus through practical experiments and enhance their knowledge of environmental…

The concept of co-amorphous systems is introduced in an integrated laboratory experiment, designed for advanced chemistry students, using solvent-free, environmentally friendly mechanochemistry. The dual-drug naproxen-cimetidine co-amorphous system (NPX-CIM) is investigated as an example of the emergent field of medicinal mechanochemistry.…

Gold nanoparticles are exciting materials in nanotechnology and nanoscience research and are being applied across a wide range of fields including imaging, chemical sensing, energy storage, and cancer therapies. In this experiment, students will synthesize two sizes of gold nanospheres (~20 and ~100 nm) and will create gold nanostars utilizing a…

Professional development courses help teachers integrate new content knowledge into the high-school curriculum. Designing practical online courses for this purpose is challenging, particularly in emerging fields such as nanotechnology. In this study, we evaluated such a course in three complementary dimensions: (1) knowledge, (2) the complexity of…

Nanochemistry is an important aspect of modern chemical science. Though few educational institutions teach nanochemistry as a formal course, general exposure of students to nanoscience is yet important. Thus, we present a nanochemical activity that could be used as part of many chemistry courses or laboratories based on ChemToy2. This activity is…

Novel carbon nanomaterials such as reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and graphene oxide (GO) can be easily incorporated into the undergraduate curriculum to discuss basic chemistry and nanotechnology concepts. This paper describes a laboratory experiment designed to study the differences between GO and rGO regarding their physicochemical properties…

Surface structures on the nanometer size scale can impart new and exciting properties to bulk materials. Nanoscopic structures on hydrophobic materials can result in superhydrophobicity and structural coloration. We present an interdisciplinary experiment that introduces undergraduate students to nanotechnology by manipulating the…

The main problem in students' lower achievement lies in the cognitive complexity of the problem. The aim of this research was to create and validate the procedure for the assessment of the cognitive complexity of chemical technology problem tasks. The procedure included the creation of Tables for assessing the difficulty of concepts in chemical…

A simple, reliable, and cost-effective experiment is presented in which students synthesized citrate-capped gold nanoparticles (GNPs), functionalized them with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), and transferred the PEG-GNPs from water to the organic phase dichloromethane. The experiment introduces students to nanotechnology with foci on important…

The goal of this research is to provide a rich set of connections between two fields: (i) Nanoscale science and technology (NST) and (ii) topics from a common middle school physics curriculum. NST is emerging as one of the most promising new fields of the 21st century, which is one of the many arguments for including NST topics in secondary…

Science and technology play an important role in modern medicine and experience shows that, although school students and their relatives are likely to have experienced some of the complex procedures available today, they are generally not aware of the science behind them. Demonstrations that link school science to medical procedures can therefore…

It is widely argued that Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NST) is going to affect several aspects of our life. Therefore, students need to develop their nanoliteracy to cope with the everyday issues related to NST. Although there is an increasing interest in introducing NST content to primary school students, the theoretical frameworks for…

Nanoscience and nanotechnology are two key areas in the development of new technologies. However, scientific advances in these fields are still far removed from the contents taught in schools. But what if basic concepts within these areas were introduced in secondary schools? We believe science is an essential facet of culture and the most recent…

Students often confuse the functional differences between motion "transmission" and "transformation" systems. Students find it difficult to conceptualize differences between the specific systems. In this article, the author describes a technology and engineering unit that incorporates problem-based learning (PBL) to assist…

In this work, a laboratory experiment to introduce graduate students to nanotechnology is described. Students prepared poly(lactic-"co"-glycolic acid) (PLGA) nanoparticles using two different synthesis procedures, a single and a double emulsion-solvent evaporation method. The students also performed a physicochemical characterization of…