By hosting a college students' laboratory skills contest, we provide an interesting activity for students to cultivate good laboratory practices and thereby improve their laboratory skills. The substance of this contest is the detection of the hardness of water, which involves numerous laboratory skills such as solution preparation, weight by…

Coagulation is an important process in the context of water purification; and the seed protein of the moringa tree ("Moringa oleifera") is a remarkably effective coagulant. The laboratory course described here is designed to provide high-school students with a stepwise, hands-on experience in investigating the protein-rich coagulant…

Laboratory activities are central to undergraduate student learning in science and engineering. With advancements in computer technology, many laboratory activities have shifted from providing students experiments in a physical mode to providing them in a virtual mode. Further, physical and virtual modes can be combined to address a single topic,…

The undergraduates in the major of Environmental Science and Environmental Engineering frequently ignored the importance of identifying pollution sources for water environment monitoring and knew little about the techniques of identifying pollution sources. Thus, a laboratory experiment which focused on pollution sources identification in a water…

The chemistry laboratory is an impactful platform for introducing inquiry and developing science practice skills. We designed a short lab course to introduce incremental levels of inquiry, also to interconnect and integrate different domains of chemistry. Indigo dye was the central theme of this short course wherein students synthesized indigo,…

Approximations can help to orient the student in an organic chemistry laboratory. There the student needs to develop the solvent systems for the reaction and isolation of organic reactants and products. The adage "like dissolves like" helps in this regard, but this approach is vague and entirely qualitative. More quantitative approaches…

As the use of plastics expands, microplastic concentrations increase in aquatic environments and negatively impact water, soil, and animals inhabiting these areas. Microplastic research frequently incorporates citizen science to assist in data collection and environmental education. These projects provide opportunities for greater societal…

Removing the pollutants from various wastewater is crucial to the environment, ecology, and humans. However, the pollutants are generally removed by chemical decomposition, which not only consumes a lot of energy but also produces carbon emissions. Electrochemical flocculation is effective to extract pollutant molecules and heavy ions from…

Biosphere contamination is a current environmental and social issue that must be included in the school programme. It is essential that students recognise their responsibility, and be knowledgeable about the generation and reduction of environmental pollution. Dyes are usually used in school activities and discharged into household effluents,…

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs)have been shown to result in increased science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) persistence, but such experiences are rarely available for first-year STEM students. This work outlines the development and integration of a CURE into a year-long honors general chemistry laboratory…

Chemistry in water is an emerging field that fulfills the fifth principle of green chemistry: replacing toxic organic solvents with their benign counterparts. Although some pharmaceutical industries have developed and adopted chemistry in water, its implementation in teaching laboratories is still limited. Therefore, we have designed an experiment…

Millions of people do not have access to clean drinking water; thus, cost-efficient water treatment systems are vital. Chemists, environmentalists, technicians, and engineers will be the professionals making breakthroughs in this industry. This laboratory experiment aims to introduce undergraduate students to the removal of pollutants from water…

A key part of the practice of chemistry is the analysis of chemical composition, including through gravimetric analysis and spectrophotometry. However, the complexity of doing multiple calculations to obtain analytical evidence, such as that required to determine an empirical formula, presents a challenge if such analytical methods are to be…

As part of its STEM programming initiatives, Community Boating, Inc., the nation's oldest public sailing organization introduced an "Introduction to Microscopy" course merging principles of scientific investigation with analytical techniques using compound light microscopes. Boston's Charles River provided the environmental setting for…

The electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen is a critical step in many green chemistry processes. The key to the efficiency of water electrolysis is the synthesis of an appropriate electrocatalyst. Three-dimensional (3D) printing is an increasingly important part of many industrial processes. In this study, we propose an efficient laboratory…