Presents a simple and reliable technique using commonly available equipment for monitoring carbon monoxide in automobile exhaust. The experiment utilizes a gas chromatograph and a thermal conductivity detector (TCD). (DDR)

Uses an action research approach to investigate how different modes of pre-laboratory preparation contribute to a fruitful laboratory experience for first year students on an access program. Concludes that the ability to prepare depended upon conceptual and procedural understanding of the laboratory as a whole. (Author/MM)

The feasibility of the laboratory production of copper metal from a readily available, naturally occurring mineral malachite utilizing techniques that are consistent with the time period of around 4000 B.C.E. is presented. The starting materials are inexpensive and convenient and the procedure involves no hazardous reagents and produces no…

Computer programs and models are used to express respect for life by not sacrificing any animal but these alternatives might be deeply flawed. Alternatives to dissection are perverse alternatives that tend to preserve the features of inappropriate dissections like destructiveness, reductionism and objectification.

The potency of heat in gases is measured by the application of a computer and the LabWorks interaction, while the speed of sound in gases is determined by an instrument called Kundt's tube. This unique and accurate procedure is repeatable, and greatly reduces data acquisition time.

In tactile learning, sucrose is the unconditioned stimulus and reward, which is usually applied to the antenna to elicit proboscis extension and which the bee can drink when it is subsequently applied to the extended proboscis. The conditioned stimulus is a tactile object that the bee can scan with its antennae. In this paper we describe the…

Multistep syntheses are often important components of the undergraduate organic laboratory experience and a three-step synthesis of 5-(2-sulfhydrylethyl) salicylaldehyde was described. The experiment is useful as a special project for an advanced undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory course and offers opportunities for students to master a…

A set of highly atom-economic experiments was developed to highlight the differences between acid- and base-catalyzed ester syntheses and to introduce the principles of atom economy. The hydrochloric acid-catalyzed formation of an ester was compared with the 4-dimethylaminopyradine-catalyzed ester synthesis.

A typical card sort is an activity in which students are given a set of cards with a single concept written on each card and asked to organize the cards by grouping related concepts. The nontraditional card sorts described in this article foster critical thinking and add elements of inquiry as students use them to develop flowcharts for complex…

Fifteen years ago, Pascual-Leone and colleagues used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate speech production in pre-surgical epilepsy patients and in doing so, introduced a novel tool into language research. TMS can be used to non-invasively stimulate a specific cortical region and transiently disrupt information processing. These…

Can you imagine a class where students cover the content with each other rather than simply listening to the professor's lecture? Can you envision students developing their own laboratory investigations and quizzing each other weekly to check for understanding? Well, that's pretty much how the major science organizations across the nation are…

A new method is presented for measuring the rate of the oxidation of glucose in the presence of glucose oxidase. The improved method employs luminescence measurements to directly determine the concentration of oxygen in real time, thus obviating complicated reaction schemes employed in previous methods. Our method has been used to determine…

An upper-division forensic chemistry experiment is described. It involves using glycolic acid and sodium glycolate as analogs of [gamma]-hydroxybutyric acid and its sodium salt. The experiment shows the use of silylation in GC-MS analysis and gives students the opportunity to work with a commonly used silylating reagent,…

This article argues that advances in nanotechnology in general, and lab-on-chip technology in particular, have the potential to benefit the developing world in its quest to control risks to human health and the environment. Based on the "risk society" thesis of Ulrich Beck, it is argued that the developed world must realign its science and…

This research effort compared and contrasted two conceptually different methods for the exploration of human anatomy in the first-year dissection laboratory by accomplished students: "physical" dissection using an embalmed cadaver and "digital" dissection using three-dimensional volume modeling of whole-body CT and MRI image sets acquired using…