Progress is made in science by constructing many models (possibly of different complexities), testing them against measurements, and determining which of them explain the data the best. It is my observation, however, that in many introductory physics labs we provide students with the materials and methods to verify the "correct" model of…

We believe that a natural focus of the physics education research community is on understanding and improving students' learning in our physics courses. Due to the increase in technology, we can bring laboratory experiments closer to our students. It is necessary to update our laboratories technologically to get closer to the world in which our…

This study examines and describes how various online remote laboratory courses, necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, were implemented at Hankuk University in Korea in 2020. We compared four general undergraduate laboratory courses, one each for physics, chemistry, biology, and earth science, and two major-level laboratory courses taught during…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Uncertainty is an important concept in physics laboratory instruction. However, little work has examined how students reason about uncertainty beyond the introductory (intro) level. In this work we aimed to compare intro and beyond-intro…

Governance and regulation of the use of live animals in research and teaching is examined in Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, China, Japan and India. A comparison of the systems in different countries will enable the determination of best practice and fit-forpurpose regulation. The most comprehensive government…

Eleven different laboratory experiments were designed and executed throughout a semester to provide a meaningful research experience for 23 undergraduate biochemistry majors at UTSA. The topic of the semester was based on the idea of exploring new aspects to enhance our understanding of how the human body uses cytochrome P450 enzymes to metabolize…

The "maker" movement is gaining widespread attention, especially in the field of laboratory education. Here we have built a low-cost, "do-it-yourself", open-source thermal conductivity cell detector (TCD) for chemical laboratory analysis, which is assembled from thermal conductivity gas sensor elements and 3D-printed flow cell…

Descriptive statistics involves summarizing and organizing data so that they can be easily understood. Even though these are basic and simple concepts, many applied science students have misconceptions about their use in applied experiments in the laboratory. Students usually receive limited or no training in how to understand the meaning of the…

Most, if not all, physics undergraduate degree programs include instructional lab experiences. Physics lab instructors, both faculty and staff, are instrumental to student learning in instructional physics labs. However, the faculty-staff dichotomy belies the complex, varied, and multifaceted landscape of positions that lab instructors hold in the…

Scanning probe-based microscopes (SPMs) are widely used in biology, chemistry, materials science, and physics to image and manipulate matter on the nanoscale. Unfortunately, high school and university departments lack expensive SPM tools and materials microscopy activities to educate a large number of students in this vital SPM imaging technique.…

A class of 18 students attending the last year of an Italian high school was divided into groups and performed the extraction of pigments contained in hibiscus tea. Each group worked at a different temperature and carried out multiple extractions using distilled water as a solvent. By means of UV-vis spectroscopy it was possible to determine the…

Chemistry topics are ubiquitous in healthcare diagnostics as well as health professions undergraduate curricula. However, there are limited correlations between chemistry and healthcare made in textbooks or template lecture materials. For undergraduate nursing students (BSN) enrolled in a Chemistry for Health Professions course, the author (and…

The general assembly meeting of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2015 adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed at achieving a better and more sustainable world by 2030. Incorporating sustainable values through a series of pedagogical strategies into university curricula to help…

In this laboratory experiment, the synthesis and characterization of H[subscript 5]PV[subscript 2]Mo[subscript 10]O[subscript 40]@Cu[subscript 3](BTC)[subscript 2] (denoted as NENU[subscript -9], H[subscript 3]BTC = 1,3,5-benzenetricarboxylic acid) and its application in fuel desulfurization were performed. This experiment is designed for advanced…

We investigated physics students' behavior in a second-year laboratory by analyzing transcribed audio recordings of laboratory sessions. One student group was given both a problem and procedure and asked to analyze and explain their results. Another was provided with only the problem and asked to design and execute the experiment, interpret the…