The Beijing University personnel reform has taken a substantive step. Director Zhou Yueming of the Beijing University Personnel Department confirmed the Beida Personnel Department issued a notice over the Beida campus Web site (www.pku.edu.cn) announcing the public recruitment of professors. Ninety-five professorial positions are anticipating…

Based on a purposive sample of 15 second-year chemical engineering students, this study investigates students' conceptions of evaporation, condensation and vapour pressure. During individual interviews the students were questioned on three tasks that had been designed around these topics. Qualitative analysis of student responses showed a range of…

Local universities and other higher education establishments represent a huge potential resource for primary schools that is often untapped. The School of Chemistry at Bristol University has recently become a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), the only one in the country in chemistry. The authors' project, known as Bristol…

We employ tools of complexity theory to examine the effect of cognitive variables, such as working-memory capacity, degree of field dependence-independence, developmental level and the mobility-fixity dimension. The nonlinear method correlates the subjects' rank-order achievement scores with each cognitive variable. From the achievement scores in…

Andreas Libavius' (c. 1555-1616) three part collection of letters, the "Rerum chymicarum epistolica forma...liber" (1595-1599) is a particularly important text in fashioning the subject of chemistry as a demonstrative science and as a didactic discipline. Where Libavius' "Alchemia", which some have claimed to be the first textbook of chemistry,…

One of the first tasks students learn in chemistry is to pronounce and spell the names of elements and learn their corresponding chemical symbols. Repetitive oral recitation is commonly used to learn this information, but games and puzzles can make this task creative, variable, and fun. Elemental Food for Thought is a puzzlelike activity that…

The Australian Government has stressed the important role universities play in producing knowledge workers to service the needs of the technology-driven "new economy". The massification of Australian higher education from 1989 rapidly increased the stock of university-educated people in all disciplines. Although university science…

The stereoselective synthesis of an aryl vinyl bromide is accomplished in a rapid microscale reaction of "trans"-4-methoxycinnamic acid with N-bromosuccinimide in dichloromethane. The product is purified by dry column vacuum chromatography and its stereochemistry is determined by [superscript 1]H NMR. TLC, GC and GC-MSD can also be used. This…

Circular dichroism spectroscopy was used to measure the thermal unfolding of bovine pancreatic ribonuclease A (RNase A) with various concentrations of guanidine hydrochloride (GuHCl). A red shift in transition midpoint temperatures, T[subscript m], occurred with increasing concentration of the strong protein denaturant. van Hoff enthalpy changes,…

Astronomy and astronomy-related topics have sufficient appeal and depth that they can be used to motivate students, illustrate important chemical concepts, and demonstrate that chemistry and chemists are concerned with all parts of nature. In this article some recent developments in astrochemistry are suggested as examples for the teaching of…

The transformation of 346 chemistry courses into a training experience that could provide undergraduate students with a skill set essential for a research-based chemistry career is presented. The course has an innovative structure that connects undergraduate students with graduate research labs at the semester midpoint and also includes new,…

Annis Hapkiewicz received the 2005 James Bryant Conant Award in High School Chemistry Teaching at the 229th American Chemical Society National Meeting held in March 2005 in San Diego, California. Hapkiewicz discusses the Conant Award and his successful teaching career.

One of the simulation engines of an open-source program called the Molecular Workbench, which can simulate thermodynamics of chemical reactions, is described. This type of real-time, interactive simulation and visualization of chemical reactions at the atomic scale could help students understand the connections between chemical reaction equations…

Several chemical concepts to the extraction of a water pollutant OPC (octylphenoxyacetic acid) is presented. As an introduction to the laboratory experiment, a discussion on endocrine disrupters is conducted to familiarize the student with the background of the experiment and to explain the need for the extraction and quantitation of the OPC which…

Undergraduate research at two-year colleges has the potential to remedy low enrollment and high attrition in chemistry-based programs. It also assists students in making successful transitions from the associate degree to the bachelor's degree level in the chemical sciences.