Many studies have stressed students' lack of understanding of experiments in laboratories. Some researchers suggest that if students design all or parts of entire experiment, as part of an inquiry-based approach, it would overcome certain difficulties. It requires that a procedure be written for experimental design. The aim of this paper is to…

Although stereochemistry is an important topic in second-year undergraduate organic chemistry, there are limited options for laboratory activities that allow direct visualization of macroscopic chiral phenomena. A novel, guided-inquiry experiment was developed that allows students to explore chirality in the context of cholesteric liquid crystals.…

Equivalence-based instruction (EBI) has been used to successfully teach college-level concepts in research laboratories, but few studies have examined the results of such instruction on classroom performance. The current study answered a basic question about the ordering of training stimuli as well as an applied question regarding the effects of…

Among computational methods, DFT (density functional theory) and TD-DFT (time-dependent DFT) are widely used in research to describe, "inter alia," the optical properties of transition metal complexes. Inorganic/physical chemistry courses for undergraduate students treat such methods, but quite often only from the theoretical point of…

The binding constant and stoichiometry ratio for the formation of iron(II)-(1,10-phenanthroline) or iron(II)-o-phenanthroline complexes has been determined by a combination of a low-cost analytical method using a smartphone and a molecular modeling method as a laboratory experiment designed for analytical and physical chemistry courses. Intensity…

A novel smartphone microscope can be used to observe the dissolution and crystallization of sodium chloride at a microscopic level. Observation of these seemingly simple phenomena through the microscope at 100× magnification can actually reveal some surprising behavior. These experiments offer the opportunity to discuss some basic concepts such as…

Science laboratory is a very important resource input for teaching science. Learning science is enhanced and the understanding level is improved when students are engaged in science laboratory for practical experiments. The current study aimed to assess the status of Biology laboratory and practical activities in some selected secondary and…

We explore the overlap of two nationally recognized learning outcomes for physics lab courses, namely, the ability to model experimental systems and the ability to troubleshoot a malfunctioning apparatus. Modeling and troubleshooting are both nonlinear, recursive processes that involve using models to inform revisions to an apparatus. To probe the…

The Polymers and Cross-Linking experiment is presented via a new three phase learning cycle: CORE (Chemical Observations, Representations, Experimentation), which is designed to model productive chemical inquiry and to promote a deeper understanding about the chemistry operating at the submicroscopic level. The experiment is built on two familiar…

Chemistry self-efficacy beliefs have been defined as someone's beliefs about his or her own capability to perform a given chemistry task. These beliefs, one of the affective variables in the laboratory practices which are quite effective for learning science, affect individuals' accomplishment, motivation and anxiety. Self-efficacy is task and…

This article describes the implementation of two inexpensive social learning library laboratories for advanced students in Latin American and Chicana/o studies. Drawing on philosophical literature from these interdisciplinary areas and ethnic studies, these cases present a "third space" option for library learning called…

In this paper, we outline the theory behind the educational design used to implement a large-scale high school astronomy education project. This design was created in response to the realization of ineffective educational design in the initial early stages of the project. The new design follows an iterative improvement model where the materials…

Most undergraduate mass transfer and separation courses cover the design of distillation columns, and many undergraduate laboratories have distillation experiments. In many cases, the treatment is restricted to simple column configurations and simplifying assumptions are made so as to convey only the basic concepts. In industry, the analysis of a…

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,…