Guiding students while they explore educational software is important in order to convey the pedagogical pragmatism that many programs seem to lack. This article points out some characteristics that we believe educational software exploration guides must contain for students to benefit from using these programs. The supporting information includes…

Liquid-vapor, solid-vapor, and solid-liquid-vapor equilibria are studied for the pure substance water, using modern equipment that includes specially fabricated glass cells. Samples are evaporatively frozen initially, during which they typically supercool to -5 to -10 [degrees]C before spontaneously freezing. Vacuum pumping lowers the temperature…

This case study places the high school student as a researcher for Carbonation Creators (fictional entity), a company responsible for making the Fizzy Forcer (a device to improve carbonation in previously opened bottles of soft drinks). The company faces a class-action lawsuit claiming that the Fizzy Forcer does not retain carbonation levels in…

Interdisciplinarity is rapidly becoming a norm within both the professional and academic worlds, and the ability to collaborate is becoming an essential skill for all graduates. "Chemistry Is in the News" ("CIITN") is a curriculum that aims to teach students this skill by engaging student collaborative groups in a project that…

The requirement that universities prepare students in practical competences, and assess the extent to which pre-established objectives are achieved, is generally accepted to be of growing importance. As a result, on one hand, there is an increasing volume of research related to task performance in assessment. On the other hand, there are…

We present a quantitative model for predicting the level of difficulty subjects will experience with specific problems. The model explicitly accounts for the number of subproblems a problem can be broken into and the difficultly of each subproblem. Although the model builds on previously published models, it is uniquely suited for blending with…

In recent years, major drivers of undergraduate science education reform including the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) have called on college and university instructors to take a more scientific approach to their teaching. Although many biochemistry instructors are gaining confidence in using…

Instructional metaphors scaffold learning better when accompanied by an elaboration. Applying structure mapping theory, we developed and used an elaborated instructional metaphor (text and illustrations) for introductory chemistry concepts. In two studies (N[subscript 1] = 44, N[subscript 2] = 57), college students with little chemistry background…

Submicrorepresentations (SMRs) are a powerful tool for identifying misconceptions of chemical concepts and for generating proper mental models of chemical phenomena in students' long-term memory during chemical education. The main purpose of the study was to determine which independent variables (gender, formal reasoning abilities, visualization…

PhET Interactive Simulations (sims) are now being widely used in teaching physics and chemistry. Sims can be used in many different educational settings, including lecture, individual or small group inquiry activities, homework, and lab. Here we will highlight a few ways to use them in teaching, based on our research and experiences using them in…

Middle school students often struggle when writing testable problems, planning valid and reliable procedures, and drawing meaningful evidence-based conclusions. To address this issue, the author created a student-centered lab handout to facilitate the inquiry process for students. This handout has reduced students' frustration and helped them…

Secondary teachers participating in summer professional development chemistry workshops in Texas used an online chemistry tutoring program, OWL Quick Prep (Day et al. in OWL: Online Web-based Learning, Brooks-Cole Cengage Learning, Florence, KY, 1997) as a part of the inservice training. Self-reported demographic data were used to identify factors…

Investigations that integrate concepts from geological sciences with biology and chemistry are rare. The authors present an investigation that introduces high school students to microbe-mineral interactions by tying together anaerobic respiration, reduction reactions, metal ion solubility, and groundwater pollution. During the investigation,…

This laboratory project is one component of a semester-long advanced biochemistry laboratory course that uses several complementary techniques to study tRNA[superscript Phe] conformational changes induced by ligand binding. In this article we describe a set of experiments in which students assay metal-catalyzed hydrolysis of tRNA[superscript Phe]…

While naive "Caenorhabditis elegans" individuals are attracted to 0.1-200 mM NaCl, they become strongly repelled by these NaCl concentrations after prolonged exposure to 100 mM NaCl. We call this behavior gustatory plasticity. Here, we show that "C. elegans" displays avoidance of low NaCl concentrations only when pre-exposure to NaCl is combined…