The notion that acid salts exist only for diprotic and polyprotic acids is found in many high school and university textbooks, although the "only" condition is not always stated explicitly. A fairly simple experiment shows that there is a pronounced exothermic effect when pure acetic acid is added to potassium acetate. Experiments with similar…

This sequence of three guided-inquiry labs is designed for a second-semester general chemistry course and challenges students to discover basic theoretical principles associated with [superscript 13]C NMR, [superscript 1]H NMR, and IR spectroscopy. Students learn to identify and explain basic concepts of magnetic resonance and vibrational…

The mental models of both novice and advanced chemistry students were observed while the students performed a periodic table activity. The mental model framework seems to be an effective way of analyzing student behavior during learning activities. The analysis suggests that students do not recognize periodic trends through the examination of…

A scaffold was created for the explicit instruction of laboratory report writing. The scaffold breaks the laboratory report into sections and teaches students to ask and answer questions in order to generate section-appropriate content and language. Implementation of the scaffold is done through a series of section-specific worksheets that are…

The greatest difficulty that is encountered by students in thermodynamics classes is to find relationships between variables and to solve a total differential equation that relates one thermodynamic state variable to two mutually independent state variables. Rules of differentiation, including the total differential and the cyclic rule, are…

Demonstrating how surface chemistry and self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) control the macroscopic properties of materials is challenging as it often necessitates the use of specialized instrumentation. In this hands-on experiment, students directly measure a macroscopic property, the floatation of glass coverslips on water as a function of…

The purposes of the study were to identify the employment of biology adjunct faculty, and to determine what support and professional development is provided for them across three sizes of rural community colleges. This study used a mixed-method research design. Nine rural community colleges participated in the study. Quantitative data were…

This paper refers to an ongoing PhD research (2011-2014) aimed at contributing to a better understanding of student questioning in the teaching, learning and assessment processes in higher education (HE), focusing on gender. The research is being conducted with first year chemistry students at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, and is intended…

Assuming that textbooks give literary expression to cultural and ideological values of a nation or group, we propose the analysis of chemistry textbooks used in Brazilian universities throughout the twentieth century. We analyzed iconographic and textual aspects of 31 textbooks which had significant diffusion in the context of Brazilian…

The literature on the pedagogical aspects of the photoelectric effect as used in the undergraduate student laboratory shows that little research has been done in this area. Our current study is an analysis of the instructions in 38, electronically published laboratory manuals for the photoelectric effect. The analyses were based on history and…

In the current laboratory assignment, technical aspects of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) are integrated in the context of six different bacterial outbreak scenarios. The "Enterobacterial Repetitive Intergenic Consensus Sequence" (ERIC) PCR was used to analyze different outbreak scenarios. First, groups of 2-4 students determined optimal…

The implementation of an automated system based on the hot-wire technique is described for the measurement of the thermal conductivity of liquids using equipment easily available in modern physics laboratories at high schools and universities (basically a precision current source and a voltage meter, a data acquisition card, a personal computer…

Students taking introductory physics are rarely exposed to computational modeling. In a one-semester large lecture introductory calculus-based mechanics course at Georgia Tech, students learned to solve physics problems using the VPython programming environment. During the term, 1357 students in this course solved a suite of 14 computational…

This article presents two integrated laboratory exercises intended to show students the role of [alpha]-amylases (AAMYs) in saliva and detergents. These laboratory practicals are based on the determination of the enzymatic activity of amylase from saliva and different detergents using the Phadebas test (quantitative) and the Lugol test…

In proteomics, complex mixtures of proteins are separated (usually by chromatography or electrophoresis) and identified by mass spectrometry. We have created 2DE Tandem MS, a computer program designed for use in the biochemistry, proteomics, or bioinformatics classroom. It contains two simulations--2D electrophoresis and tandem mass spectrometry.…