Learning and understanding physics requires more than studying physics texts. It requires doing physics. Doing research is a key opportunity for students to connect physical principles with their everyday experience. A powerful way to introduce students to research and technique is through subjects in which they might find interest. Presented is…

The goal of this study was to create an accessible, inexpensive, and engaging experiment to teach high school and undergraduate chemistry or biology students about intermolecular forces and how they contribute to the behavior of biomolecules. We developed an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to probe specific structure-function…

Every instructor should know some easy examples of anharmonic oscillations. The rocking of an empty wine bottle or a slender beer glass is one of those: The angle is not a sinusoidal function of time and the period is not independent of the amplitude, not even for small amplitudes. But care has to be taken that the glass does not slip or rotate…

Electrochemistry is a significant area of analytical chemistry encompassing electrical measurements of chemical systems. The applications associated with electrochemistry appear in many aspects of everyday life: explaining how batteries work, how the human nervous system functions, and how metal corrosion occurs. The most common electrochemical…

In April 1820, Hans Christian Ørsted noticed that the needle of a nearby compass deflected briefly from magnetic north each time the electric current of the battery he was using for an unrelated experiment was turned on or off. Upon further investigation, he showed that an electric current flowing through a wire produces a magnetic field. In 1831…

In nature, water drops can have a large variety of sizes and shapes. Small droplets with diameters of the order of 5 to 10 µm are present in fog and clouds. This is not sufficiently large for gravity to dominate their behavior. In contrast, raindrops typically have sizes of the order of 1 mm, with observed maximum sizes in nature of around 5 mm in…

In a recent paper, Zable described an experiment with a near-spherical balloon filled with impure helium. Measuring the temperature and the pressure inside and outside the balloon, the lift of the balloon, and the mass of the balloon materials, he described how to use the ideal gas laws and Archimedes' principal to compute the average molecular…

A laboratory experiment has been developed to illustrate environmental and sustainability aspects, focusing on the wastewater treatment by means of superparamagnetic nanoparticles functionalized with humic acid. The experiment, conducted by a group of high school students, involves nanoparticle synthesis and minor characterization, followed by…

Biochemistry courses in the Department of Molecular Biology at the National University of Río Cuarto, Argentina, are designed for undergraduate students in biology, microbiology, chemistry, agronomy, and veterinary medicine. Microbiology students typically have previous coursework in general, analytical, and organic chemistry. Programmed sequences…

Teaching complex chemistry concepts such as kinetics using inquiry-based learning techniques can be challenging in a high school classroom setting. Access to expensive laboratory equipment such as spectrometers is typically limited and most reaction kinetics experiments have been designed for advanced placement (AP) or first-year undergraduate…

Carbon is at the heart of many of today's environmental challenges. It is the central element responsible for the structure and function of living systems--taken up by plants through photosynthesis and moving from plants to other organisms, soil, and the ocean and into the atmosphere. The imbalance of these connected biogeochemical…

A simple capacitive cell for dielectric constant measurement in liquids is presented. As an illustrative application, the cell is used for measuring the degradation of overheated edible oil through the evaluation of their dielectric constant.

Solar current is an increasingly important aspect of modern life and will be even more so crucial in the students' future. Encouraging students to be the "toolmakers" allows students to take ownership of scientific investigations, as well as forcing them to refine their research questions and hypothesis, including the design and…

In its program of studies for preschool level, the Secretary of Public Education of Mexico promoted development of four standards of science: Scientific knowledge, applications of scientific knowledge and technology, skills associated to science, and attitudes associated to science. However, to develop this skills and reach out the standards there…

A two-part experiment using bubble rafts to analyze amorphous structures is presented. In the first part, the distinctions between crystalline and vitreous structures are examined. In the second part, the interface between crystalline and amorphous regions is considered. Bubble rafts are easy to produce and provide excellent analogy to recent…