An experiment for the synthetic undergraduate laboratory is described in which zeolite 5A catalyzes the room temperature dehydration of diphenylmethanol, (C[subscript 6]H[subscript 5])[subscript 2]CHOH, producing 1,1,1',1'-tetraphenyldimethyl ether, (C[subscript 6]H[subscript 5])[subscript 2]CHOCH(C[subscript 6]H[subscript 5])[subscript 2]. The…

An activity has been designed for the purpose of teaching how light is dispersed in a straight line and about the interaction between matter and light as well as the related concepts of shadows, partial shadows, reflection, refraction, primary colours and complementary (secondary) colours, and differentiating the relationship between colours, all…

Between 1880 and 1920 the way science was taught in American High Schools changed dramatically. The old "lecture/demonstration" method, where information was presented to essentially passive students, was replaced by the "laboratory" method, where students performed their own experiments in specially constructed student laboratories. National…

Well-designed "controls" distinguish experimental from non-experimental studies. Surprisingly, we found that a high percentage of students had difficulty identifying control experiments even after completing three university-level laboratory courses. To address this issue, we designed and ran a revised cell biology lab course in which…

This paper introduces the importance of middle school students' interests in learning biology. Considering the psychological characteristics of middle school students, this paper suggests several practical ways for inspiring students' interests in learning biology.

Photovoltaic-cell-based projects have been used to train eight incoming undergraduate women who were part of a residential summer programme at a women's college. A module on renewable energy and photovoltaic cells was developed in the physics department. The module's objectives were to introduce women in science, technology, engineering and…

This experiment targets undergraduate students in an analytical or organic instructional context. Using a simple extraction, this protocol allows students to quantify and qualify monoterpenes in essential oils from citrus fruit peels. The procedures involve cooling down the peels by immersing them into icy water. After a few minutes, the chilled…

In this article, the authors describe two classroom experiments that can be interpreted by means of Bernoulli's law. The first experiment uses a lighted candle in front of a mirror and a stream of air that is sent obliquely towards the mirror. The purpose of this experiment is to find out which way the flame will bend if air is blown at a given…

Archimedes (287-212 BC) is well known for his explanation of buoyancy, and in particular for his "eureka" moment. This experiment uses his density measurement method to find the purity of gold, and additional confirmation of the findings are given by x-ray fluorescence. (Contains 4 figures and 1 table.)

The overwhelming majority of important papers in physics are written by physicists. But the physician Julius Robert Mayer (1814-1878, see photo) did a valid theoretical calculation of the mechanical equivalent of heat just before Joule reported on his results from his well-known paddle-wheel experiments. Joule is well-known to physics people and…

Experiment is conducted to determine the kinetic parameters of metal-solution interfaces. During the experiment the kinetic parameters for the interfaces Cu-NH[subscript 3], Ag-NH[subscript 3] and Ni-NH[subscript 3] is easily determined.

Two new experiments are offered concerning the experimental verification of Boyle's law and the ideal gas law. To carry out the experiments, glass tubes, water, a syringe and a metal manometer are used. The pressure of the saturated water vapour is taken into consideration. For educational purposes, the experiments are characterized by their…

The topics of molecular modeling and drug design are studied in a medicinal chemistry course. The recently reported structures of several G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) with bound ligands have been used to develop a simple computer-based experiment employing molecular-modeling software. Knowledge of the specific interactions between a ligand…

This paper describes an experiment performed by the fourth year chemical engineering students in the process control laboratory at the University of Waterloo. The objective of this experiment is to test the capabilities of a constrained Model Predictive Controller (MPC) to control the operation of a Double Pipe Heat Exchanger (DPHE) in real time.…

Changing mass phenomena like the motion of a falling chain, the behaviour of a falling elastic bar or spring, and the motion of a bungee jumper surprise many a physicist. In this article we discuss the first phase of bungee jumping, when the bungee jumper falls, but the bungee rope is still slack. In instructional material this phase is often…