The start of a new school year is a challenging and exciting time for any teacher--and a time when beginning teachers particularly need our support. Working with new science teachers in the New Science Teachers' Support Network (NSTSN) has shown the authors that veteran teachers have the greatest impact on beginning teacher's success. The NSTSN is…

Results of a study designed to determine the effectiveness of implementing three-dimensional (3D) stereo images of a human skull in an undergraduate human anatomy online laboratory were gathered and analysed. Mental model theory and its applications to 3D relationships are discussed along with the research results. Quantitative results on 62 pairs…

From media news coverage to fluctuating gas prices, the topic of energy is hard to ignore. However, little connection often exists between energy use in our daily lives and the presentation of energy-related concepts in the science classroom. The concepts of energy production and consumption bring together knowledge from several science…

A recent reform in the Portuguese secondary school curriculum reintroduced the study of capacitors. Thus we decided to implement some experimental activities on this subject with our undergraduate students in physics education courses. A recent announcement of a new kind of capacitor being developed by a team of scientists at Massachusetts…

Coupling the scholarly activities of the chemistry research faculty with that of the first-year honors general chemistry laboratory has resulted in additional research experience for undergraduate students and a rise of productivity within the chemistry department. For seven years, first-year university honors students enrolled in the honors…

In an attempt to establish the role of the laboratory in chemistry instruction, an historical perspective is developed, in the hope of extracting the consensus of commentators on the subject concerning the important features of the laboratory experience. We present arguments to support the idea that laboratory instruction involves student…

Whole-class inquiry (WCI) assessments range from challenging, paper-and-pencil puzzles to lab-based problems that require students to apply their own gathered data to a new scenario; the latter might also require students to perform a lab with new parameters, or to answer a question using data from a previous lab. In this article, the authors…

Recently, a high school Science Club generated a large number of questions involving temperature. Therefore, they decided to construct a thermal gradient apparatus in order to conduct a wide range of experiments beyond the standard "cookbook" labs. They felt that this apparatus could be especially useful in future ninth-grade biology classes, in…

A central theme of the "National Science Education Standards" is teaching science as an inquiry process, allowing students to explore an authentic problem using the tools and skills of the discipline. Research indicates that more active participation by the student, which usually requires higher-order thinking skills, results in deeper learning.…

A web-based virtual laboratory exercise in identifying an unknown microorganism was designed for use with a cohort of 3rd-year university food-technology students. They were presented with a food-contamination case, and then walked through a number of diagnostic steps to identify the microorganism. At each step, the students were asked to select 1…

This study explored the effectiveness of an inquiry-based cellulase laboratory unit in promoting inquiry in undergraduate students in biotechnology. The following tools were used to assess the students' achievements and attitude: conceptual understanding test, concept mapping, students' documents, CLES questionnaire, students' self reflection, and…

In this article, the authors present a laboratory activity that relies on the use of a very versatile bacterial system to introduce the concept of how mutagenesis can be used for molecular and genetic analysis of living organisms. They have used the techniques of random mutagenesis and selection/screening to obtain strains of the organism "R.…

We describe a simple undergraduate lab in which students determine how the force between two magnetic dipoles depends on their separation. We consider the case where both dipoles are permanent and the case where one of the dipoles is induced by the field of the other (permanent) dipole. Agreement with theoretically expected results is quite good.

Permanent magnets have long been used in both traditional laboratory exercises and in inquiry-based learning activities. These pedagogical applications are typically timed to correspond to the early coverage of magnetism in the second-semester sequence of introductory physics. At the initial level the concepts relate to the magnetic field of the…

In first-year general chemistry undergraduate courses, thermodynamics and thermal properties such as melting points and changes in enthalpy ([Delta]H) and entropy ([Delta]S) of phase changes are frequently discussed. Typically, classical calorimetric methods of analysis are used to determine [Delta]H of reactions. Differential scanning calorimetry…