Build-up of static electricity happens readily when the air is cold and dry and is a common part of life. There are lots of ways to make students aware of static electricity--and many things one can teach them about its applications in today's industry. In this article, the author describes examples and experiments that will bring static…

In this laboratory or demonstration exercise, we mount a small airfoil with its long axis vertical at one end of a nearly frictionless rotating platform. Air from a leaf blower produces a sidewise lift force L on the airfoil and a drag force D in the direction of the air flow (Fig. 1). The rotating platform is kept in equilibrium by adding weights…

Enzyme stereospecificity and equilibrium thermodynamics can be demonstrated using the coupling of two amino acid derivatives by Thermoase C160. This protease will catalyze peptide bond formation between Z-L-AspOH and L-PheOMe to form the Aspartame precursor Z-L-Asp-L-PheOMe. Reaction completion manifests itself by precipitation of the product. As…

Experiments are described for the preparation of imidazolium chloride precursors to "N"-heterocyclic carbenes and their cyclopentadienyl nickel chloride derivatives. The syntheses have been optimized for second- and third-year undergraduate laboratories that have a maximum programmed length of three hours per week. The experiments are flexible and…

The use of an internal standard is a conventional and convenient way to monitor the conversion of one or several monomers during a controlled radical polymerization. However, the validity of this technique relies on an accurate determination of the initial monomer-to-internal standard ratio, A[subscript 0], because all subsequent calculations of…

Terms to be familiar with before you start to solve the test: chromatin, nucleases, sucrose density gradient centrifugation, melting point, gel electrophoresis, ethidium bromide, autoradiography, Southern blotting, Northern blotting, Sanger sequencing, restriction endonucleases, exonucleases, linker DNA, chloroform extraction, nucleosomes,…

The production of bioethanol from cellulosic waste is described. The experiment is suitable for students in secondary school classroom settings and leads to bioethanol in a concentration high enough to burn the liquid. The experiment consists of three steps: (i) the cellulose of the waste material is converted to glucose by cellulase enzymes, (ii)…

Science is at heart a practical subject, but the perception of what makes good teaching and learning through practical science is often misunderstood. Through working with teachers on professional development courses at the UK's National Science Learning Centre, and drawing on work carried out by other organisations, we present some thoughts and…

In Germany, science education standards for students at the end of grade nine have been in existance since 2005. Some of these standards are dedicated to scientific inquiry (e.g. experimentation). They describe which abilities learners are expected to possess at the end of grade nine. In the USA, several documents describe standards for…

In traditional teaching, the fundamental concepts of electromagnetic induction are usually quickly analyzed, spending most of the time solving problems in a more or less rote manner. However, physics education research has shown that the fundamental concepts of the electromagnetic induction theory are barely understood by students. This article…

Pioneering Mars: Turning the Red Planet Green with the Earth's Smallest Settlers (http://pioneeringmars.org) provides a partnership model for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) learning that brings university scientists together with high school students to investigate whether cyanobacteria from Antarctica could survive on…

In order to challenge our undergraduate students' enduring misconception that plants, animals, and fungi must be "advanced" and that other eukaryotes traditionally called protists must be "primitive," we have developed a 24-hour take-home guided inquiry and investigation of live Physarum cultures. The experiment replicates…

In Germany, science education standards for students at the end of grade nine have been in existence since 2005. Some of these standards are dedicated to scientific inquiry (e.g. experimentation). They describe which abilities learners are expected to possess at the end of grade nine. In the USA, several documents describe standards for…

In the 1960s, Tanzanian student Erasto Mpemba and his teacher published a paper with the title "Cool?" in this journal (Mpemba and Osborne 1969 "Phys. Educ." 4 172-5). They claimed that hot water freezes more quickly than cold water. The paper not only led to a wave of discussion, and more publications about this topic, but also to a whole series…

Digital storage oscilloscopes (DSOs) are now easily available to undergraduate laboratories. In many cases, a DSO can replace a data-acquisition system. Seven such experiments/demonstrations are considered: (i) families of "I-V" characteristics of electronic devices (bipolar junction transistor), (ii) the "V-I" curve of a high-temperature…