This experiment provides students with a thorough understanding of electrolysis and the parameters that most greatly impact optimization of this process. In this laboratory exercise, students will focus on the anodization of bismuth metal to develop thin oxide films. When designing an electrolytic cell devoted to anodization, there are several…

Research has shown that within a traditional organic chemistry curriculum, organic chemistry students struggle to develop deep conceptual understanding of reactions and attribute little meaning to the electron-pushing formalism. At the University of Ottawa, a new curriculum was developed for organic chemistry in which students are taught the…

Understanding redox reactions in biochemistry requires a clear grasp of three definitions: electron exchange, oxidation number, and oxygen atom insertion. Here, the electrochemical cell is explained for redox-active ions, introducing a new comparison between the measurement of midpoint potential and the measurement of initial velocity for enzymes.…

How far, in space, can we see? And can we see an object whose Hubble recessional velocity exceeds the speed of light? Maybe you've thought about these questions before, or perhaps you've seen them discussed in the literature or mentioned in the media. With the recent popularity of inflation and Big Bang cosmology, they're hard to avoid. The…

We investigate the motion of fidget spinners of different configurations with the help of simple devices. Physical quantities associated with the fidget spinner motion like angular speed, moment of inertia and kinetic energy are determined and compared in different configurations. A configurable modification of the fidget spinners is done to…

Part 1 of the series looked at teaching speed and velocity. Part 2 considers the teaching of acceleration in physics. Teachers may find it okay to hurry through the concepts of speed and velocity because they are intuitive. But teachers cannot hurry through acceleration quite so quickly because it is not intuitive. Whereas velocity is a rate of…

There have been a few methods described in this journal and elsewhere for measuring the wavelength of the standing electromagnetic waves in a microwave oven. Typically, these involve melting chocolate, cheese, or some other substance on a plate that is prevented from rotating. In this article I describe a more dynamic and colorful technique that…

What do you get when you cross a rubber band with a photocopier? You get a whole series of physics lessons and some great images! It's easy to get this activity up and running, be amazed, and apply it to any number of scientific concepts. It lends itself to a whole host of investigations. This easy-to-do activity can also be aligned to NGSS…

Technological innovations and changing learning environments are influencing student engagement more than ever before. These changing learning environments are affecting the constructs of student behavioural engagement in the online environment and require scrutiny to determine how to facilitate better student learning outcomes. Specifically,…

Visualizations may help students understand the network of connections among multiple documents. This study explored how ninth-grade students used a novel digital document mapping scaffold to construct models of multiple documents. We examined students' maps and mapping processes in order to understand how they used the scaffold to visually…

There is a long tradition of teaching science through inquiry, with broad agreement about the form it should take. Students should investigate researchable questions; gather and analyse data; and develop and represent evidence-based claims. Authoritative teacher or textbook representations are generally used to guide this learning (Buckley &…

As science and technology create an ecosystem that is becoming increasingly more knowledge-intensive, complex, and interconnected, the next generation science standards include systems thinking and systems modeling among 21st skills that should be fostered. We examined the effect of an online cross-disciplinary learning process on the development…

Background: Scientific thinking is an essential learning goal of science education and it can be fostered by inquiry learning. One important prerequisite for scientific thinking is procedural understanding. Procedural understanding is the knowledge about specific steps in scientific inquiry (e.g. formulating hypotheses, measuring dependent and…

This study examines learners' issues in learning the preparation and qualitative analysis of salts topic from Malaysian chemistry teachers' perspectives. The researchers adopted a qualitative design and conducted semi-structured interviews with sixteen informants who have experience of teaching chemistry for more than five years. They were…

The study investigated the impact of PhET simulation-based learning on students' motivation and academic achievement in learning oscillations and waves among Malawian secondary students. The following research questions guided the study: (i) What were students' motivation and academic achievement levels at the beginning of the study in oscillation…