The design and implementation of an inexpensive, high-resolution Littrow-type visible light spectrometer is presented. The instrument is built from low-cost materials and interfaced with the program RSpec for real-time spectral analysis, making it useful for classroom and laboratory exercises. Using a diffraction grating ruled at 1200 lines/mm and…

This "Science Note" looks at the way that the shapes of simple molecules can be explained in terms of the number of electron pairs in the valence shell of the central atom. This theory is formally known as valence shell electron pair repulsion (VSEPR) theory. The article explains the preferred shape of chlorine trifluoride (ClF3),…

This paper examines and discusses the views on science and society held among PhD students working in two different industrially and environmentally driven research programmes in the broad area of green chemistry. It is based on thirteen in-depth interviews. The analysis shows three main ways of handling the situation as "post-academic"…

A discussion of some student conceptions of the solid-liquid and liquid-vapor phase transitions is presented. Data from open-ended, short-answer questions were collected from first-semester general chemistry students and then discussed in the context of previous studies. The responses gave insight into the various student conceptions about these…

A Web-based stereochemistry tutorial is described that details the core definitions and structural representations of stereochemistry in an organic chemistry course. The Cahn-Ingold-Prelog rules and their application for assigning "R" and "S" orientations to stereocenters and "E" and "Z" orientations to…

A two-part demonstration was conducted in our first-semester organic chemistry course designed to introduce students to the formation of alcohols, regioselective reactions, and analysis of organic products by NMR analysis. This demonstration utilized the oxymercuration-demercuration sequence to prepare an alcohol from an alkene in a Markovnikov…

Textbooks still have the distinction of being the most dominant teaching tool in science teaching. The manner in which a scientific concept is expressed in a textbook is of importance in the in-depth learning process of that concept. With this in mind, problems with expressing the "amount of substance" concept were reviewed in 15…

Orbital theory provides a powerful tool for rationalizing and understanding many phenomena in chemistry. In most introductory chemistry courses, students are introduced to atomic and molecular orbitals in the form of two-dimensional drawings. In this work, we describe a general method for producing 3D printing files of orbital models that can be…

Students in Chemistry 254: Organic Chemistry for Majors were required to write a paper about an organic name reaction. Before turning in this assignment, students had the option of attending a one-hour library instruction session covering SciFinder, sources for spectra, ACS Style, and print resources about organic name reactions. Twenty-five…

This study aimed at investigation of the roles of the laboratory in students' academic achievement in chemistry in secondary schools in Ebonyi State of Nigeria. Four research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. A sample of 240 students selected through simple random sampling technique from ten secondary schools in the 3 Education Zones…

Scientific undergraduate research in higher education often yields positive outcomes for student and faculty member participants alike, with underrepresented students often showing even more substantial gains (academic, professional, and personal) as a result of the experience. Significant success can be realized when involving deaf and…

Students evaluate their achievement in a specific domain in relation to their achievement in other domains and form their self-concepts accordingly. These comparison processes have been termed "dimensional comparisons" and shown to be an important source of academic self-concepts in addition to social and temporal comparisons. Research…

The flipped classroom is a pedagogical approach that moves course content from the classroom to homework, and uses class time for engaging activities and instructor-guided problem solving. The course content in a sophomore level Organic Chemistry I course was assigned as homework using video lectures, followed by a short online quiz. In class,…

A simple and ecofriendly procedure was developed in order to prepare extracts from red and green leaves. This procedure enables the separation of yellow, green, and red band pigments and optimizes the previously reported baking soda "supermarket column". The same extract also led to a novel and colorful potato starch column, which can…

A novel procedure is described where students use COMU [(1-cyano-2-ethoxy-2-oxoethylidenaminooxy)dimethylamino-morpholino-carbenium hexafluorophosphate], as a nonhazardous partner, in the one-pot coupling of a carboxylic acid and amine producing N,N-diethyl-3-methylbenzamide (DEET). Fundamental principles of carbonyl reactivity are understood,…