Nanotoxicity is an area of intense research, stimulated by increased use of nanoparticles in commercially available products. Herein, using nanotoxicity as a platform, we describe an experiment that emphasizes interdisciplinary science in a collaborative work setting while expanding the traditional realm of chemistry and chemistry research.…

This paper addresses the teaching of advanced high school courses or undergraduate courses for non-biology majors about genetics or history of genetics. It will probably be difficult to take the approach described here in a high school science course, although the general approach could help improve such courses. It would be ideal for a college…

As an important subject in the curriculum, many students find chemistry concepts difficult to learn and understand. Chemical bonding especially is important in understanding the compositions of chemical compounds and related concepts and research has shown that students struggle with this concept. In this theoretical paper based on analysis of…

A general chemistry laboratory experiment using readily available chemicals is described to introduce college students to an exciting class of nanocomposite materials. In a one-step room temperature synthetic process, magnetite nanoparticles are embedded onto activated carbon matrix. The resultant nanocomposite has been shown to combine the…

Probably owing to the prejudice that gold is a metal too noble to be used much in chemistry, the chemistry of this element has developed much later than that of its congeners and neighbors in the periodic table. In fact, before and after the time of alchemists, and up to the 20th century, all chemistry of gold was mainly performed in attempts to…

We propose an in silico experiment to introduce the classical density functional theory (cDFT). Density functional theories, whether quantum or classical, rely on abstract concepts that are nonintuitive; however, they are at the heart of powerful tools and active fields of research in both physics and chemistry. They led to the 1998 Nobel Prize in…

The hydrogen bonding of phenol can be used as an introductory model for biological systems because of its structural similarities to tyrosine, a para-substituted phenol that is an amino acid essential to the synthesis of proteins. Phenol is able to form hydrogen bonds readily in solution, which makes it a suitable model for biological…

This laboratory exercise introduces undergraduate chemistry majors to the spectroscopic and theoretical study of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), corannulene. Students explore the spectroscopic properties of corannulene using UV-vis and Raman vibrational spectroscopies. They compare their experimental results to simulated vibrational…

Noby Leong is a PhD student in Chemistry at University of Adelaide working on the design of new drug delivery systems for medical applications. He's also a science communicator, part of the volunteer blogging community at RiAus and curator of his own blog "The Other Side of Science." In this article Noby shares the highs and lows that…

This article describes an interrupted case study that intersperses information about diffusion and osmosis with content review and knowledge application questions, as well as a simple experiment that can be conducted without the use of a laboratory. The case study was developed for use in an introductory undergraduate biology course. The case…

Three-dimensional (3D) nuclear charts were created using toy blocks, which represent the atomic masses per nucleon number and the total half-lives for each nucleus in the entire region of the nuclear mass. The bulk properties of the nuclei can be easily understood by using these charts. Subsequently, these charts were used in outreach activities…

DockoMatic 2.0 is a powerful open source software program (downloadable from sourceforge.net) that allows users to utilize a readily accessible computational tool to explore biomolecules and their interactions. This manuscript describes a practical tutorial for use in the undergraduate curriculum that introduces students to macromolecular…

Skill in organic chemistry nomenclature is fundamental for communicating more complex concepts. Interpreting and using functional group names is particularly important. With nomenclature101.com, students can create tailored interactive quizzes according to their learning needs; the tool is free and available in English and French. The present…

This research revealed that metal ions with different charges could significantly affect the viscosity of aqueous sodium carboxylmethylcellulose (CMC) solution. On the basis of an Ostwald viscometer, an improvised apparatus using a dropping ball for examining the viscosity of liquids/solutions has been developed. The results indicate that the…

ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) is a widely used technique with applications in disease diagnosis, detection of contaminated foods, and screening for drugs of abuse or environmental contaminants. However, published protocols with a focus on quantitative detection of small molecules designed for teaching laboratories are limited. A…