While orthoesters are often used by chemists as alkylating, acylating, and formylating agents, they are rarely encountered in introductory organic chemistry curricula. We describe a second-semester organic chemistry laboratory experiment in which students acetylate unknown amine hydrochloride salts with trimethyl orthoacetate (TMOA) in the absence…

There are many lab exercises for upper-level school students and freshman undergraduates to measure the value of the local acceleration due to gravity ("g") near Earth's surface. In these exercises, the value of "g" is usually taken to be constant. The approach is often based on measuring the period of a pendulum that is…

A signature of life is that biological molecules occur as a single stereoisomer with respect to each chiral center, and this is echoed in the structures of biological polymers. Thus, circular dichroism (CD) has emerged as a hallmark of biomolecular structures. The tangible and familiar phenomenon of raw egg white's conversion from transparent…

Over the past decade, mechanistic cross-linking probes have been used to study protein-protein interactions in natural product biosynthetic pathways. This approach is highly interdisciplinary, combining elements of protein biochemistry, organic chemistry, and computational docking. Herein, we described the development of an experiment to engage…

A commercial hollow fiber blood oxygenation laboratory experiment was used to introduce lower level engineering students to mass balances in a two-phase system. Using measured values of concentration and flow rate, students calculated the rate of mass transfer from the gas phase and into the liquid phase, and compared the two values to determine…

The opportunity to engage in scientific research is an important, but often neglected, component of undergraduate training in biology. We describe the curriculum for an innovative, course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) appropriate for a large, introductory cell and molecular biology laboratory class that leverages students' high…

There is widespread agreement that an adequate understanding of the nature of science (NOS) is a critical component of scientific literacy and a major goal in science education. However, we still do not know many specific details regarding how students and teachers learn particular aspects of NOS and what are the most important feature traits of…

We demonstrate how the form of a plano-convex lens and a derivation of the thin lens equation can be understood through simple physical considerations. The basic principle is the extension of the pinhole camera using additional holes. The resulting images are brought into coincidence through the deflection of light with an arrangement of prisms.…

Solubility is frequently introduced at the high school and introductory college levels through the symbolic domain using net ionic equations and solubility product constants. Students may become proficient with spectator ion cancellation and skilled with algorithmic mathematical applications of solubility without obtaining a deeper understanding…

The purpose of this study is to interpret and qualitatively characterise the content in some research articles and evaluate cases of possible difference in meanings of the gene concept used. Using a reformulation of Hirst's criteria of forms of knowledge, articles from five different sub-disciplines in biology (transmission genetic, molecular…

This article describes the implementation and application of a metal deposition and surface diffusion Monte Carlo simulation in a physical chemistry lab course. Here the self-diffusion of Ag atoms on a Ag(111) surface is modeled and compared to published experimental results. Both the thin-film homoepitaxial growth during adatom deposition onto a…

An inversion polymorphism of the filamin and emerin genes at the tip of the long arm of the human X-chromosome serves as the basis of an investigative laboratory in which students learn something new about their own genomes. Long, nearly identical inverted repeats flanking the filamin and emerin genes illustrate how repetitive elements can lead to…

A simple setup is designed to investigate a "time-of-flight" measurement of the speed of sound in water. This experiment only requires low cost components and is also very simple to understand by students. It could be easily used as a demonstration experiment.

A number of organisations have provided instructions on how to produce small quantities of liquid oxygen in the classroom using liquid nitrogen and a copper condensation coil (Lister 1995 "Classic Chemistry Demonstrations" (London: Royal Society of Chemistry) pp 61-2, French and Hibbert 2010 "Phys. Educ." 45 221-2). The method…

In this paper we present a reasoning line for introducing the Pauli exclusion principle in the context of an introductory course on quantum theory based on the sum over paths approach. We start from the argument originally introduced by Feynman in "QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter" and improve it by discussing with students…