A continuous flow photopinacol coupling of benzophenone has been developed and implemented in the undergraduate laboratory. This photoreduction was accomplished using 2-propanol as an H atom donor and cosolvent in the reaction. The simple and inexpensive UV light source and flow reactor design (less than $350/photochemical flow system) provide an…

Williamson ether experiments are commonly performed by students in undergraduate organic chemistry instructional laboratory courses. In this multioutcome experiment, students were provided 4-bromophenol and one of three alkyl halides: 1-bromopentane, 1-bromobutane, or 1-bromo-3-methylbutane. The alkyl halides served as the unknown component of the…

A laboratory experiment characterized by a whole-class data-pooling approach to generate a data set that can be used to test a model of the influence of ionic strength on electrolyte solubility is described and discussed. The design of the experiment makes efficient use of the laboratory period and releases time for instructional and dialogic…

How well does the undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory curriculum prepare students for academic research, or for a bench job in industry? Running experiments that are more representative of research chemistry has the potential to better equip students for working in a research laboratory, while at the same time giving them insight into a…

A ball at rest on a surface can be made to bounce up by pushing it down then releasing the downward force as fast as possible. Measurements and calculations are presented to show how it can best be done.

Lock-in amplifiers (LIAs) are commonly used in chemistry laboratories to improve noise-to-signal ratios. Constructing and testing a suitably designed LIA provide undergraduate students with an excellent opportunity to learn about theory, construction, and applications of LIA. In particular, students can learn about time-dependent behavior and…

Short videos are widely used in secondary level physics classes, part of a portfolio of strategies for teaching and learning. However, research into how they are used, why they are used and the optimum design for learning is in its infancy. This paper seeks to examine how videos are used in UK physics classrooms for the communication of physics…

For years, inquiry-based learning has been conceived of and promoted as one of the best approaches to learning science. However, there is currently a movement within the science education community that suggests promoting science learning based on scientific practices, instead of inquiry, because in this way, science learning would be more…

These days, smartphones are popular commodities among students in high school and college. Students carry their devices all the time, so why not use such a popular electronic device to measure physical quantities such as "g" in physics labs? In this work, we report a "multiple tasking" method, a measurement technique that we…

In this paper a "non-elementary system" is defined as a system consisting of elementary (i.e., indivisible) constituents. Such systems are a common feature of the standard model of particle physics: for example, according to the standard model, a proton (non-elementary particle) consists of two up quarks and one down quark (elementary…

The abstract nature of physical chemistry and spectroscopy makes the subject difficult to comprehend for many students. However, bridging arts and science has the potential to provide innovative learning methods and to facilitate the understanding of abstract concepts. Herein, we present a high-school project based on the conversion of selected…

An undergraduate organic chemistry experiment has been developed that features asymmetric synthesis of an enantioenriched secondary alcohol, followed by determination of its absolute configuration using the competing enantioselective conversion (CEC) method. Students are given a ketone and an unknown enantiomer of CBS (Corey-Bakshi-Shibata)…

Physics experiments powered by a universal serial bus (USB) connection are becoming increasingly common. With teachers going through so many batteries each year, USB-powered physics provides an economical and environmentally friendly alternative. In this article, the authors discuss several ways that USB power can provide a convenient way to do…

Little is known about the integration of social-emotional learning (SEL) with science instruction. We used a sequential mixed-methods design to examine (1) how fourth graders use argumentation practices and social gestures in science class and (2) how argumentation practices and social gestures differ between intervention and comparison…

Modeling is a scientific practice that supports creative reasoning, motivates inquiry, and facilitates community sense-making. This paper explores students' perspectives on modeling in an undergraduate laboratory course, Authentic Inquiry through Modeling (AIM-Bio), in which they proposed, tested, and revised their own models. We conducted…