Field experiments offer the opportunity for hands on experience with the scientific process. While this is true of a wide variety of activities, many have pitfalls both experimental and logistical that reduce the overall rate of success, in turn, influencing student learning outcomes. Relying on small, territorial, diurnal lizards and an array of…

Students learn about physical laws and the scientific method when they analyze experimental data in a laboratory setting. Three common sources exist for the experimental data that they analyze: (1) "hands-on" measurements by the students themselves, (2) electronic transfer (by downloading a spreadsheet, video, or computer-aided data-acquisition…

It has long been known that when a cable of specified length is hung between two poles, it takes the shape of a catenary--a hyperbolic cosine function. In this paper, we study a variation of this problem. First, we consider a cable hanging between two poles in which one end of the cable is fixed to one pole; the other end of the cable runs over a…

How do you inspire students to keep records like scientists? Share the primary research of real scientists and explicitly teach students how to keep records--that's how! Therefore, a group of third-grade students and their teacher studied the work of famous primatologist Jane Goodall and her modern-day counterpart Ian Gilby. After learning about…

Encouraging students to share their ideas, design mechanisms for testing ideas, and make conclusions about the validity of their ideas on the basis of evidence collected can enhance teaching about friction. The authors focus on teaching science content and science processes in a holistic manner so that students develop enduring understandings of…

In a recent influential report by the National Research Council, the role of the laboratory was introduced as follows: "Science courses and the laboratories associated with them should cultivate the ability of students to think independently. They should provide students with exposure to realistic scientific questions and highlight those aspects…

A thin-layer fuel cell is described that is simple and easy to set up and is particularly useful for teaching and classroom demonstrations. The cell is both an electrolyzer and a fuel cell and operates using a thin layer of electrolyte with a thickness of approximately 127 micrometers and a volume of approximately 40 microliters. As an…

Many institutions are responding to current research about how students learn science by transforming their general chemistry laboratory curricula to be inquiry-oriented. We present a comparison study of student performance after completing either a traditional or an inquiry stoichiometry experiment. This single laboratory experience was the only…

We describe a study of programs to deepen families' scientific inquiry practices in a science museum setting. The programs incorporated research-based learning principles from formal and informal educational environments. In a randomized experimental design, two versions of the programs, called "inquiry games," were compared to two control…

In elementary and secondary classrooms, educators use plants for various reasons. Plants are often used during learning activities and science experiments. Also, educators frequently decorate their classrooms with plants to make the room more inviting and comfortable. Few new educators have been informed of the potential hazards of commonly known…

A take-home experiment kit has been developed to reinforce the concepts in a first year physics course that both on and off campus students from a variety of educational backgrounds can successfully use. The kit is inexpensive and is composed of easy to obtain items. The experiments conducted with the kit are directed experiments that require…

In this paper, we discuss a simple apparatus and accompanying class activity that we have developed to illustrate the Biot-Savart law. Since students in introductory electricity and magnetism courses often find this law a mathematical mystery, we feel that a simple experiment such as this will provide the students a better understanding of the…

This short article describes some useful and quick applications of a cooking electronic balance. Newton's third law, Archimedes buoyancy and an estimate of relative density are accomplished in a very simple way. (Contains 1 figure.)

We have developed a multistep inorganic synthesis experiment for our second-year undergraduate teaching laboratory that introduces students to modern organometallic chemistry. The ligands are prepared in two simple steps and the preparation of an air-stable silver carbene complex is accomplished in the third step. The students are introduced to…

A classroom demonstration detailing the procedure for the separation of a ternary mixture consisting of intensely colored compounds using silica gel column chromatography is described. The audience can follow the compounds during their passage through the column as individual, colored bands while learning about different tools and techniques used…