This study examined the effects of an intervention that integrated peer-mediated instruction (PMI) with augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) using speech-generating devices (SGDs). Nine trained peer tutors without disabilities taught science concepts and modeled use of SGDs following a script to three elementary school students with…

The term 'experiment' is used in different ways to mean different things in school science. This study examines the meanings of 'experiment' and how they have changed in the intended chemistry curriculum (ICC) in China since the early 1950s. A mixed methodology was adopted to analyse the 11 ICC documents from a socio-historical perspective. The…

Charging a capacitor with a photovoltaic module is an experiment which reveals a lot about the modules characteristics. It is customary to represent these characteristics with an equivalent circuit whose elements represent its physical parameters. The behavior of a photovoltaic module is very similar to that of a single cell but the electric…

The aim of this paper is to investigate the stability of a bottle filled with different volumes of water, and to determine the angle at which it topples over for each volume of water. Data for the angle at which the bottle toppled were gathered experimentally using a cylindrical 1 litre bottle, and two theoretical models were then developed,…

Different "thought experiments" dominate teaching approaches to weightlessness, reducing students' opportunities for active physics learning, which should include observations, descriptions, explanations and predictions of real phenomena. Besides the controversy related to conceptual definitions of weight and weightlessness, we report…

Tootsie Pops, manufactured by Tootsie Roll Industries of Chicago, Illinois, are spherical hard-candy lollipops with a chocolate-flavoured, chewy center. While Tootsie Pops have been around since 1931, it was a television commercial made in 1969 that captured the attention of many. The commercial, an amusing animated cartoon, posed the following…

We provide a design for a low cost orientable search coil that can be used to investigate the variation of magnetic flux with angle. This experiment is one of the required practical activities in the current A level physics specification for the AQA examination board in the UK. We demonstrate its performance and suggest other suitable…

Smartphones are increasingly used in higher education and at university in mechanics, acoustics, and even thermodynamics as they offer a unique way to do simple science experiments. In this article, we show how smartphones can be used in fluid mechanics to measure surface tension of various liquids, which could help students understand the concept…

This investigative laboratory activity engages students in observing, recording, graphing and analyzing pulsation rates in a commonly used laboratory organism, blackworms. This activity stresses how various drugs can impact the pulsation rate in blackworms at varying concentrations. In addition, we have incorporated two new ways to view the…

The solvent influence on the absorption spectra and the kinetics of the back reaction of the 1',3'-dihydro-1',3',3'-trimethyl-6-nitrospiro(2H-1-benzopyran-2,2'-2H-indole) (6-NO2-BIPS) has been investigated by means of temperature-controlled, UV-visible spectroscopic measurements. The back reaction process was proved to follow first-order kinetics…

Measurement of protein denaturation and protein folding is a common laboratory technique used in undergraduate biochemistry laboratories. Differential scanning fluorimetry (DSF) provides a rapid, sensitive, and general method for measuring protein thermal stability in an undergraduate biochemistry laboratory. In this method, the thermal…

Although nuclear half-life is vital to physics and physical science, and to sensitive societal issues from nuclear waste to the age of the Earth, a true lab on half-life is almost never done at the college or high school level. Seldom are students able to use radioactivity to actually date when an object came into being, as is done in this…

Multimedia instruction has been shown to serve as an effective learning aid for chemistry students. In this study, the viability of student-generated video instruction for organic chemistry laboratory techniques and procedure was examined and its effectiveness compared to instruction provided by a teaching assistant (TA) was evaluated. After…

Lab instructors, for both high school and undergraduate college level courses, face issues of constricted time within the lab period and limited student engagement with prelab materials. To address these issues, an online prelab delivery system named LabLessons is developed and tested out in a high school chemistry classroom. The system…

In this paper we present a novel way to demonstrate the Hall effect and study some of its main properties using basic materials and easily obtainable measuring devices.