Despite institutional reform efforts to increase use of evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) in undergraduate chemistry and STEM courses, didactic lecture remains the predominant mode of instruction. Research to inform these initiatives routinely focuses on drivers and barriers to EBIP adoption, with recent work investigating factors…

A goal in chemistry education research and teaching is to make chemistry education inclusive to our diverse students. Ethnography is one approach that can support this goal, because it supports researchers and educators in questioning what is considered ordinary by exploring chemistry as a culture. By exploring chemistry as a culture, we can…

Health-related career goals are popular among high school science students, yet few understand the application of chemistry and biology research to the field of medicine and its impact on society. In this five-day multidisciplinary summer camp, high school students learn about the real-world relevance of medicinal chemistry research and its…

The global Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and associated restrictions on indoor gatherings posed considerable challenges to the delivery of courses that traditionally have relied on hands-on learning in their laboratory components. Here, our experiences converting a senior instrumental analysis course to remote online learning in the…

The Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) melting assay intends to evaluate the unfolding, denaturation process of DNA secondary structures, and its stabilization using compounds known as DNA binders, some of which are highly specific for G-quadruplex DNAs versus duplex DNAs. First, students determined the melting temperature (T[subscript m])…

Recently, there have been calls to integrate systems thinking approaches into chemistry education in order to strengthen students' conceptual understanding, build their problem-solving capabilities, and prepare them to make informed, ethical decisions about globally relevant issues, such as sustainability. Unfortunately, implementation of systems…

An experiment to match five white solids with ascorbic acid, citric acid, potassium hydroxide, sodium chloride, and urea is reported here. This 4 h experiment is an integrated practice of two experimental techniques, calorimetry and titration. Students conduct an extensive literature search on the properties of the five compounds and plan the…

The drive in computational methods and more intuitive software has seen a rise in the number of publications in this area in recent years. Computational simulations can be found in many areas of science from computational biology and chemistry to fundamental physics. These may help synthetic chemists in their drug discovery endeavors and…

Protein PEGylation refers to the covalent binding of polyethylene glycol (PEG) moieties to a protein and has been increasingly applied, mainly in the biopharmaceutical industry. This technique may increase bioavailability and stability by decreasing immunogenicity and proteolytic attack. Given the industrial interest and the relevance of this…

A new method to determine a ternary phase diagram of benzene-acetic acid-water system is provided to upper-division undergraduate students. The partially miscible liquid phase region can be accurately constructed using isothermal titration microcalorimetry (ITC). Compared with the traditional visual method, ITC can provide precise data and more…

A laboratory class was developed and evaluated to illustrate the synthesis of metal nanoclusters (NCs) and to explain their photoluminescence properties for the case of silver. The described experiment employs a synthetic protocol that consists of two sequential phases in a single reaction pot: the reduction of silver ions into plasmonic silver…

When Mentos candies are dropped into a bottle of Diet Coke, a foamy fountain jets out of the beverage container. It has previously been argued that ingredients found in Mentos candies significantly enhance this fountaining effect. Other previous work has demonstrated that the kinetics of foam production can be quantitatively monitored using a…

Students tend to think of their science courses as isolated and unrelated to each other, making it difficult for them to see connections across disciplines. In addition, many existing science assessments target rote memorization and algorithmic problem-solving skills. Here, we describe the development, implementation, and evaluation of an activity…

Moral ethic prevails in the science and education of chemistry. These issues are unique to chemistry and arise from between the theoretical and the practical behavior in laboratory. The study reported in the paper investigated the impact of personal moral philosophies on the safety practices of students in chemistry and related majors. The results…

This paper describes the course outline for a three credit hour nonlaboratory course in Environmental Health Chemistry which was taught from 1981 until 2008 at the State University of New York College at Oneonta. The purpose of this paper is to share the lecture outline in the hopes that it might be useful to others who are preparing to teach…