The development of nations depends on energy consumption, which is generally based on fossil fuels. This dependency produces irreversible and dramatic effects on the environment, e.g. large greenhouse gas emissions, which in turn cause global warming and climate changes, responsible for the rise of the sea level, floods, and other extreme weather…

Gel filtration chromatography (GFC) separates molecules according to size and is one of the most widely used methods for protein purification. Here, red fluorescent protein (RFP), green fluorescent protein (GFP), yellow fluorescent protein (YFP), cyan fluorescent protein (CFP), and/or their fusion proteins were prokaryotically expressed, purified,…

Let us consider a classical high school exercise concerning two weights on a pulley and a string, illustrated in Fig. 1(a). A system like this is called an Atwood's machine and was invented by George Atwood in 1784 as a laboratory experiment to verify the mechanical laws of motion with constant acceleration. Nowadays, Atwood's machine is used for…

Kinetics is an important part of undergraduate environmental chemistry curricula and relevant laboratory exercises are helpful in assisting students to grasp concepts. Such exercises are also useful in general chemistry courses because students can see relevance to real-world issues. The laboratory exercise described here involves determination of…

Here we describe an experiment for the undergraduate physical chemistry laboratory in which students synthesize the intermetallic compounds AlNi and AlNi3 and study them by X-ray diffractometry. The compounds are synthesized in a simple one-step reaction occurring in the solid state. Powder X-ray diffractograms are recorded for the two compounds…

An interdisciplinary laboratory experiment involving second-year undergraduate organic chemistry and introductory inorganic chemistry undergraduate students is described. Organic chemistry students prepare a series of amine-bis(phenols) via a Mannich reaction, and characterize their products using melting point; FTIR; and [superscript 1]H,…

This qualitative study involved interviews of 32 faculty principle investigators at three research institutions and explored how they view the role of students within physical and life science labs. We used socialization theory and student engagement literature to analyze faculty views, which can contribute to student investment in STEM fields.…

The Scratch programming language is an introductory programming language for students. It is also a visual concurrent programming language, where multiple threads are executed simultaneously. Synchronization in concurrent languages is a complex task for novices to understand. Our research is focused on strategies and methods applied by novice…

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…

Virtual worlds are a potential medium for teaching college-level chemistry laboratory courses. To determine the feasibility of conducting chemistry experiments in such an environment, undergraduate students performed two experiments in the immersive virtual world of Second Life (SL) as part of their regular General Chemistry 2 laboratory course.…

The advent of new educational technologies has stimulated interest in using online videos to deliver content in university courses. We examined student engagement with 78 online videos that we created and were incorporated into a one-semester flipped introductory mechanics course at the Georgia Institute of Technology. We found that students were…

Developing a better understanding of the measurement process and measurement uncertainty is one of the main goals of university physics laboratory courses. This study investigated the influence of graphical representation of data on student understanding and interpreting of measurement results. A sample of 101 undergraduate students (48 first year…

The importance of culture and social interactions in disciplinary learning and language development within specific social practices and contexts is now an agreed-upon notion in the science education literature. In a pivotal article in 1990, Lemke introduced the idea of manual-technical operations as one of four modes making up the "hybrid…

The purpose of this mixed method research study was to examine the constructivist beliefs and instructional practices of secondary science teachers. The research also explored situations that impacted whether or not student centered instruction occurred. The study revealed science teachers held constructive beliefs pertaining to student…

This dissertation studied the impact of the inclusion of three-dimensional digital images of the human skeleton on the educational outcomes and perceptions of novice learners studying introductory skeletal anatomy. A group of students with little or no knowledge of human skeletal anatomy completed an online educational module, with the treatment…