Calorimetry is a central concept in the first semester general chemistry curriculum, and constant pressure (coffee-cup) calorimetry is a common experiment in the laboratory. However, constant volume (bomb) calorimetry is traditionally reserved for the physical chemistry laboratory. This article describes the advantages of incorporating bomb…

Investigating the optical properties of various chemical compounds using UV-vis spectrophotometers is an essential part of education in chemistry. However, commercial spectrophotometers are usually treated as "magic black boxes", where the dominant majority of optical elements are hidden "under the hood". This often limits…

Undergraduate-level laboratory experiments that integrate multidisciplinary chemistry concepts into a single activity are very appealing and thought-provoking for chemistry students. Here, we use the oscillating chemical reaction to introduce students to the analytical detection concept. The Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction is employed as a simple…

During the COVID-19 pandemic we developed an activity that encourages engagement with scientific reading and helps students to improve their reading skills as a complement to the glycobiology section of an undergraduate course of biological chemistry. Using "Genially," an online platform for gamification and self-taught learning, we…

There are many factors that can negatively impact student learning, including stress which impacts memory and overall well-being. A potential tool for educators to reduce stress and improve well-being is to use contemplative practices in the classroom, such as mindfulness and gratitude. In this Activity, we integrated voluntary daily mindfulness…

Kombucha, a popular probiotic beverage, contains detectable concentrations of ethyl alcohol. To be sold as a nonalcoholic product, alcohol concentrations in kombucha must be shown to be less than 0.5% by volume. This paper describes the use of an inexpensive, commercially available sensor to reliably and accurately measure alcohol concentrations…

Metal-air battery technology is a promising new energy storage solution in the green energy economy but also an excellent tool to educate students on the working principles of batteries. A simple yet powerful construction of a metal-air battery is shown, which consists of a plastic mint box, a cathode, an anode, and an electrolyte. Furthermore,…

There is an overwhelming consensus that sustained opportunities for teachers' professional learning is critical for student success, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the nature, substance, and format of K-12 teachers' opportunities for professional learning necessarily shifted. District administrators, focused on maintaining the safest possible…

The ability to build mechanistic explanations of natural phenomena is highly valued in all scientific disciplines, including chemistry. In this paper, we summarize the results of a qualitative study designed to characterize the nature of the mechanistic explanations built by college General Chemistry students when analyzing a physical process…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Curriculum Development: Theory into Design.] When we examined student responses to questions about the direction of the static friction force in various situations, we both had strong ideas about how to write a tutorial to promote deeper understanding. But our ideas were quite different. In this…

Important changes were recently made to the International System of Units. The readers involved in chemistry and physics, either teachers or advanced students, should be aware of the new definitions of the kilogram, the mole, and more generally of the changes in International System of Units (SI, "Système International") recently…

In a familiar demonstration, a hoop and a solid disk of the same diameter and mass are started from rest at the top of an inclined plane and race to the bottom. The disk reaches the bottom with a larger speed than the hoop and arrives first. Why?

A standard physics experiment for students is to measure the terminal velocity of an object in air or in glycerine. A more difficult challenge is to measure the terminal velocity in water since the depth of the water needs to be large or the object needs to be dropped in the water at a speed close to its terminal velocity. Results obtained by…

One step of the published mechanism of the hydrogen peroxide iodine-clock reaction is called into question by the result of an experimental attempt (predicated on that mechanism) to integrate that reaction into the elephant's toothpaste demonstration to reveal and control its iodine side product. Under conditions that were a hybrid of those…

Carbonated beverages have long provided chemical educators and other teachers of science with an easy-to-obtain system that connects to several physicochemical concepts. For example, many educators have devised experiments to determine the pressure of CO[subscript 2] contained in commercial carbonated beverages, but the role of temperature in such…