Laboratory courses can serve as important avenues to equitably support introductory biology students to develop foundational scientific literacy skills while experiencing the authentic research process. We present a model for an equity-focused redesign of an introductory organismal biology laboratory course at a teaching institution with limited…

Science and engineering practices (SEPs) and crosscutting concepts (CCs) constitute a significant part of "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" (NRC 2012). As teachers, the role of the authors is to highlight the pivotal role that both scientific knowledge and the practices used to generate knowledge play in learning. This article…

Hands-on experiences in analytical chemistry laboratories are essential to improve students' technical skills on handling analytical glassware and instruments, but the coronavirus pandemic in 2020-2021 disrupted such learning activities. Thus, alternative remote activities are required to supplement practical skills. In this work, a new portable…

Beta-adrenergic receptors ([beta]-ARs) prime hippocampal synapses to stabilize long-term potentiation (LTP). This "metaplasticity" can persist for 1-2 h after pharmacologic activation of [beta]-ARs. It requires activation of PKA (cAMP-dependent protein kinase) during [beta]-AR priming. A-kinase anchoring proteins (AKAPs) tether PKA to…

Most springs do not simply obey Hooke's law because they are constructed to have an initial tension, which must be overcome before normal elongation occurs. This property, well known to engineers, is universally neglected in elementary physics courses. In particular, the standard simple harmonic motion experiment omits any discussion of this…

The conservation law of energy and momentum can be examined and demonstrated by a well-known collision experiment. In this experiment, several identical elastic balls are suspended from a horizontal frame. When the ball at one end is pulled aside and released, thus allowing it to swing like a pendulum, it hits the next ball. The outcome is…

Protein engineering represents a modern approach to generate novel proteins for the different fields of biotechnology. Here, we report about an 8-day laboratory activity in which students generate enzyme variants to degrade the herbicide glyphosate. The students conduct a true research experiment in an important field (bioremediation by novel,…

An upper-division undergraduate- or graduate-level laboratory experiment, challenging students to identify bovine serum albumin, equine myoglobin, bovine calmodulin, and bovine cytochrome c, uses four methods of matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS): linear positive, in-source decay, peptide…

The conical pendulum is a topic theoretically approached in physics literature, but with little experimental activity developed due to the difficulty of reproducing the conical motion in ideal experimental conditions. This work consisted of studying the motion of a rigid conical pendulum using video analysis. The experimental results were used as…

The Leidenfrost nanochemistry synthesis of gold colloids was introduced in this "Journal" as an advanced method to synthesize gold nanoparticles during an undergraduate nanochemistry research project. When trying to repeat these experiments in the laboratory, we experienced difficulties in the synthesis of the gold nanoparticles since…

Learning introductory quantum physics is challenging, in part due to the different paradigms in classical mechanics and quantum physics. Classical mechanics is deterministic in that the equations of motion and the initial conditions fully determine a particle's trajectory. Quantum physics is an inherently probabilistic theory in that only…

This study aims to measure Brewster's angle of glass and acrylic brick with an easy-to-obtain mobile application (app) by changing the tungsten light source to a red laser. The popularization of the smartphone has inspired many to use its various built-in sensors to carry out general physics experiments. Many others have adopted both a laser and a…

In a classical electronic laboratory, there is an experiment where a diode is connected in a series with a resistor and a variable DC voltage source in order to draw the characteristic I-V curve of the diode. Input voltage is gradually increased starting from 0 V, and the potential difference between the diode's terminals is read by using a…

BYOL (Bring Your Own Lime), a novel laboratory experiment, is introduced in this paper. Students are encouraged to bring affordable household and grocery store chemicals into the classroom. The Bring Your Own Chemical (BYOC) concept demonstrates to students that food and household products are chemicals too. Citruses are often used to highlight…

Gay-Lussac's law states that the pressure of an ideal gas is directly proportional to its absolute temperature if the volume is constant. Students observe this relationship by taking measurements on the pressure of gas in a flask or metal sphere at different temperatures and then extrapolate the data to estimate absolute zero. In our college…