An introductory general chemistry laboratory course was developed to provide an authentic research experience in environmental chemistry. First- and second-year students learned general chemistry concepts and laboratory skills in the context of snow chemistry while participating in the course-based undergraduate research experience. Students were…

In this laboratory experiment, students performed thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) coupled with mass spectrometry (MS) of herbaceous materials (TGA-MS) and learned to analyze mass-loss curves, as well as identify common fragmentation ions. The experiment is the first one to present the application of TGA in a currently relevant topic: biomass…

Laboratory reports written in the style of a standard scientific article are commonly used to assess student learning in biochemistry laboratory courses. While most students can complete the Materials and Methods or Results sections successfully, many have difficulty with the Introduction and Discussion. They fail to place their data in a larger…

The ability of certain organometallic reagents to react via 1,2- or 1,4-addition to an a,ß-unsaturated ketone is a fundamental example of regioselectivity at the second-year undergraduate organic level. The following two experiments were designed to demonstrate this preference by exploiting carvone as an inexpensive chiral, nonracemic substrate.…

An undergraduate experiment for the organic laboratory is described that utilizes microwave heating to prepare 5- substituted 1H-tetrazole derivatives through a (3 + 2) cycloaddition between aryl nitriles and sodium azide. The reaction mixture is analyzed by thin layer chromatography. The products are purified through an acid-base extraction and…

This paper describes an undergraduate laboratory experiment where students study the heating behavior of magnetic nanoparticles in the presence of alternating magnetic fields. Average score on the post-test was 45±12% for students who completed the lab online, versus 43±11% for those doing the activity hands-on. Post-test scores were significantly…

In the years 2015-2018, the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research and the Italian Ministry of Defense proposed the joint initiative "Space for Your Future. The ISS: Innovatio, Scientia, Sapientia" in partnership with the Italian Space Agency. It was a competition addressed to secondary school students and aimed at…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, mandatory changes were required in the field of education, as in many other fields. One of these fields is a teacher training programme, which includes teaching practice. It has become of great importance that pre-service science teachers, who frequently include experiments in their teaching practices in face-to-face…

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…

Background: Achieving the targeted of university physics courses and improving student motivation requires varying types of instructional design. One alternative approach to the traditional lecture format involves the use of historical science stories, which are narratives that present episodes from the life of a scientist, as well as…

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of objects that can exchange data with other devices also connected to the Internet. One of the most common consumer examples of IoT is home automation, as a variety of smart devices, including doorbells, lightbulbs, thermostats, and refrigerators are now available which users can control remotely using…

At the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic surprised the world, affecting activities that promote attendance, including abruptly impacting the education area. Educational institutions, from preschool to university, were required to adopt alternative teaching methods to continue their activities. Distance learning has been adopted by educators…

The reform documents point out the necessity of teaching the plurality of scientific method (SM) when scientists engage in scientific practices (SPs). The dramatic change in education due to COVID-19 pandemic necessitates examining the outcomes of online education, especially laboratory applications courses, which the students and educators used…

The high level of consumption of processed foods has an effect on human health. The consumption of doughnuts, pastries, fried chicken, French fried potatoes, snack chips, and imitation cheese is high among teenagers. These foods are generally rich in fats, although the focus has often been on the quantity rather than the quality of these fats.…

Chemometric techniques such as partial least-squares (PLS) regression have been applied with huge success to a wide array of chemical problems including multicomponent analysis of analytes in complex mixtures. Despite this, there are few examples of laboratory pedagogical exercises that involve students in the acquisition of chemical data from…