The placement of final-year undergraduate students into schools and colleges is becoming increasingly common in higher education as part of outreach, employability and community-building initiatives. This article describes one such initiative at the School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, its successes, its challenges and why schools…

Many of us have played the PC Solitaire game that comes as standard software in many computers. Although I am not a great player, occasionally I win a game or two. The game celebrates my accomplishment by pushing the cards forward, one at a time, falling gracefully in what appears to look like a parabolic path in a drag-free environment. One day,…

This study explores what students understand about enzyme-substrate interactions, using multiple representations of the phenomenon. In this paper we describe our use of the 3 Phase-Single Interview Technique with multiple representations to generate cognitive dissonance within students in order to uncover misconceptions of enzyme-substrate…

"Think outside the box" is a very common phrase, routinely used to convey the idea of finding creative and unconventional solutions to problems. Although widely used as a cliche in the business world, this phrase is significantly applicable to people who do science for a living, because scientists are constantly developing and testing new ideas.…

The components of a performance-enhancing drug (PED) test in sports include sample selection, collection, establishing sample integrity, sample pretreatment, analyte detection, data evaluation, reporting results, and action taken based on the result. Undergraduate curricula generally focus on the detection and evaluation steps of an analytical…

Trace levels of oxytetracylcine spiked into commercial milk samples are extracted, cleaned up, and preconcentrated using a C[subscript 18] solid-phase extraction column. The extract is then analyzed by a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) instrument equipped with a UV detector and a C[subscript 18] column (150 mm x 4.6 mm x 3.5 [mu]m).…

Peer reviews are the generally accepted mode of quality assessment in scholarly communities; however, they are rarely used for evaluation at college levels. Over a period of 5 years, we have performed a peer review simulation at a senior level course in molecular genetics at the University of Guelph and have accumulated 393 student peer reviews.…

This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of the motion of spherical particles in viscous fluids. The classical problem of spheres falling through viscous fluids for small Reynolds numbers was solved taking into account the effects of added mass. The analytical solution for the motion of a falling sphere, from the beginning to the…

Resistance to motion often includes a dry frictional term independent of the speed of an object and a fluid drag term varying linearly with speed in the viscous limit. (At higher speeds, quadratic drag can also occur.) Here, measurements are performed for an aluminium disc mounted on bearings that is given an initial twist and allowed to spin…

A simple low-cost experiment for undergraduate students to determine the characteristics of a negative temperature coefficient of resistance thermistor is presented. The experiment measures the resistance-temperature and voltage-temperature characteristics of the thermistor. Results of the resistance-temperature experiment are used to determine…

The Millikan oil-drop experiment, to determine the elementary electrical charge e and the quantization of charge Q = n [middle dot] e, is an essential experiment in physics teaching but it is hardly performed in class for several reasons. Therefore, we offer this experiment as a remotely controlled laboratory (RCL). We describe the interactivity…

The problem of charge motion governed by image force attraction near a plane metal surface is considered and solved self-consistently. The temporal dispersion of metal dielectric permittivity makes the image forces dynamic and, hence, finite, contrary to the results of the conventional approach. Therefore, the maximal attainable velocity turns out…

An assessment of the acylation of ferrocene laboratory exercise across three successive years resulted in a significant fluctuation in student perception of the experiment. This perception was measured by collecting student responses to an instrument immediately after the experiment, which includes Likert and open-ended responses from the student.…

The main objective of this work is to generate a set of exercises to improve the autonomous learning in "Continuum Mechanics" through a virtual platform. Students will have to resolve four exercises autonomously related to the subject developed in class and they will post the solutions on the virtual platform within a deadline. Students…

Metallacrowns are a versatile class of inorganic compounds with uses in several areas of chemistry. Students engage in a multiweek, upper-division inorganic laboratory that explores four different metallacrown compounds: Fe[superscript III](O[subscript 2]CCH[subscript 3])[subscript 3][9-MC[subscript Fe][superscript III][subscript…