Journal of Chemical Education最新文献

A comprehensive laboratory exercise is described whereby students measure oscillations in electric potential between iron and carbon electrodes immersed in an acidic solution of hydrogen peroxide. The oscillations observed vary greatly in complexity. After collecting the data, students use a kinetic mechanism to qualitatively model some of the less complex oscillations. The experiment is straightforward to carry out and uses materials commonly found in chemistry laboratories. In addition, the proposed mechanism involves a variety of iron species that are familiar to students of chemistry.

Training in hands-on research is essential for developing core scientific skills in undergraduate students and expanding their career prospects in STEM fields. However, limited internship availabilities, financial constraints, and time demands often make these opportunities inaccessible. To address this gap, we designed and implemented a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) into a biochemistry curriculum through a multiweek computational protein-design project. A cohort of 79 upper-division undergraduate students with prior knowledge of protein chemistry were challenged with the research question: Can rationally designed mutations in an α helix of the model helical protein AvrPto enhance its overall structural stability? Using freely available computational tools such as PyMOL, Discovery Studio Visualizer, AGADIR, AlphaFold 3, Rosetta-suite, and GROMACS, students learned to design novel mutations in helix H1 of the AvrPto protein to enhance its α-helical propensity and study their effects on the overall protein structure, stability, and dynamics. The objective is to help students apply foundational concepts of chemistry to address a complex biological problem. Pedagogically, the study allows students to build transferable skills in protein design, molecular modeling, simulation workflows, and critical scientific reasoning. These skills are invaluable for careers in academia, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical industries. For educators, it provides a scalable framework for integrating authentic research into teaching that is adaptable across various chemistry and biochemistry programs.

Transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) students face unique forms of marginalization in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), yet their experiences are often obscured by aggregating LGBTQIA+ populations into a single category. This qualitative study examines how TGNC students experience stigma and navigate belonging within introductory chemistry courses, which is a context where disciplinary norms often reflect cisnormative and exclusionary values. Guided by Goffman’s Stigma Theory and Handley’s Situated Learning Theory, we analyzed two case studies informed by semistructured interviews and supporting survey data. Findings reveal that both students perceived chemistry as a space where their identities were devalued or incompatible with dominant norms, resulting in identity misalignment and constrained participation. Despite these challenges, neither participant fully disidentified from STEM, suggesting that the exclusion they experienced was specific to the culture of chemistry rather than science more broadly. These cases illustrate how stigma and disciplinary culture intersect to shape TGNC students’ sense of legitimacy, belonging, and self-concept in the sciences. We argue that chemistry education must move beyond presumed neutrality to critically engage with the sociopolitical dimensions of the field. Creating inclusive chemistry learning environments will require confronting the structural and cultural norms that render TGNC students invisible or unsafe.

Click chemistry and bioorthogonal reactions have revolutionized chemical biology, offering powerful tools for selective molecular transformations in complex biological environments. Despite their widespread adoption in research, these concepts are rarely included in undergraduate laboratory curricula due to the cost, instability, or complexity of many commonly used reagents. In this work, we present a simple and rapid, yet visually engaging, laboratory experiment for second-year undergraduate students that introduces the principles of click and bioorthogonal chemistry through the formation of a diazaborine heterocycle between 2-formylphenylboronic acid and benzylhydrazine. The experiment is conducted in a phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) solution enriched with lysine, glucose, and glutathione, creating an artificial cellular environment, and requires only standard reagents and basic equipment. Students observe product formation via precipitation, calculate yields, and reflect on the implications of compatibility and selectivity in biological settings. Additionally, the learning outcomes were assessed through lab notebooks, in-class performance, and a postlab quiz. In summary, the proposed activity effectively introduces boron click chemistry in an accessible context and demonstrates the relevance of bioorthogonal reactions in modern chemical biology.

Although the use of representations is crucial for problem-solving in chemistry, students often encounter challenges when using them. Hence, various interventions have been designed to support students’ use of chemistry representations, which can motivate students to modify their visual behavior. However, to fully understand how these interventions affect students, it is crucial not only to understand how they are using representations but also to understand how and to what extent their visual behavior changes in response to these interventions. Since learning may induce complex changes in eye movement across spatial, temporal, and psychophysiological dimensions, a key methodological challenge is how to comprehensively characterize these changes in instructional settings. However, relying on single metrics offers only fragmented insights, capturing isolated aspects of students’ information processing, whereas simultaneous interpretation of multiple eye-tracking metrics presents considerable challenges. In light of this, we conducted two studies using stereochemistry tasks to explore how changes in eye movements can be comprehensively characterized in students who participated in an intervention and those who did not. By calculating the average absolute bounded normalized change across multiple eye-tracking metrics, as Δ_Gaze, and additionally examining the change of individual eye-tracking metrics across tasks, we were able to characterize both overall and detailed changes in students’ eye movements while considering the multifaceted nature of eye-tracking data. In this article, we illustrate the potential and limitations of this methodological approach.

This study presents an innovative undergraduate experiment that integrates the preparation and sensing application of conductive hydrogels to explore hydrogen bonding. By constructing a poly(vinyl alcohol)/polyethylene glycol/phytic acid (PVA/PEG/PA) conductive hydrogel system, the mechanism and application of hydrogen bonding are made observable through thermoplastic behavior and human motion sensing. Using a one-step sol–gel method, PVA/PEG/PA hydrogels are prepared with component ratios adjusted to influence mechanical properties and thermoplasticity. Practice sessions, like circuit conductivity verification and human motion signal collection, transform the abstract theory of hydrogen bonding into a multisensory learning experience and address the limitations of traditional lecture-heavy methods which often struggle to demonstrate the practical impact of molecular-level interactions. This integration of synthesis, characterization, and application significantly enhances educational effectiveness and cultivates problem-solving skills through a hands-on investigation. This teaching model offers an integrated approach for polymer physicochemistry courses, cultivating engineering thinking and scientific inquiry abilities.

Over the past decade, numerous computer-assisted retrosynthesis reaction prediction methods have been reported in the chemical literature, several of which are also shared as open-source code. Reports of integrating these modern open-source retrosynthetic prediction techniques into the chemical education classroom, however, is largely absent. This article describes our efforts to teach a computer-assisted retrosynthesis workshop series using open-source reaction prediction software and methods. In addition to three workshops on selected open-source reaction prediction methods, the series included workshops on Python programming and introductory cheminformatics using the RDKit cheminformatics toolkit. A pre and post survey was distributed to better understand participant familiarity and workshop outcomes. Participants indicated that they had minimal experience with cheminformatics, and open-source retrosynthesis software, however after the workshop series they indicated increased familiarity, interest, and desire to pursue additional training related to open-source retrosynthesis software and methods. We conclude this article with our experiences and ideas for future improvements. The workshop materials and code are available with an open source license, and educators are encouraged to adapt and improve the lessons (https://github.com/UA-Libraries-Research-Data-Services/retrosynthesis).

The mechanistic approach to teaching introductory-level organic chemistry─Organic One and Two (Organic I and II) in the United States─continues to predominate since its introduction through Morrison and Boyd’s legendary textbook. In this approach, reactions are taught alongside their electron-pushing mechanisms (EPMs), thereby providing students with a logical method to learn the transformations. Rather than use EPMs as a tool to learn the corresponding reactions, most of the chemical education research (CER) over the past two decades indicates that students need the reactions to infer their EPMs. From a constructivist perspective, the students’ consistent use of structural representations of reactant(s), intermediate(s), and product(s) to propose EPMs illustrates their sense-making processes. As such, instruction on reactions should precede instruction on EPMs, indicating that the standard mechanistic approach may not be cognitively feasible for most students. This Perspective contains four main sections. First, the CER on how students solve electron-pushing tasks is presented to substantiate the claim about students’ use of structural representations to infer EPMs. Second, these research data are interpreted using a constructivist framework. Third, another body of CER is presented to support the assertion of cognitive disconnect. Fourth, the work of three groups who are developing significant improvements to delivering and assessing the mechanistic approach is briefly presented, followed by a few considerations for research and teaching moving forward.

Chemistry is not very popular in school; many students do not see the relevance of chemistry. Drop-out rates at university are also quite high, especially after the switch from general chemistry (or inorganic chemistry) to organic chemistry. In this article, a new general concept for learning chemistry at school and at university, regardless of whether it is inorganic or organic chemistry, will be described and discussed. For most chemical reactions, electron flow occurs. Here, the electron movement can be followed and visualized. This should also make the switch from general (or inorganic) to organic chemistry much easier for the students because there is no need for learning new elements of the formula language such as electron pushing arrows. For making the relevance of chemistry transparent, focusing on electron flow should also be beneficial; renewable energy and the use of hydrogen as a substitute for fossil fuels also include electron flow. These topics can therefore be discussed in chemistry lessons using the FOLTEL (follow the electrons) concept. The development of this concept will be described based on a review of relevant literature. For applying the concept, a construction kit with several different arrows was developed and used. Two interview studies on the application of the concept for solving tasks in general and organic chemistry will be described and discussed. The second study was designed as an intervention study. The results show that the students who used the construction kit were significantly more successful in developing the reaction mechanisms.

We present the application of high-efficiency, low-cost, and facile-preparation copper oxide (CuO) nanoparticles as a laboratory experiment for the fast decontamination of organic dye wastewater through an advanced oxidation process (AOPs) for undergraduate students. The CuO nanoparticles are synthesized via a facile alkaline aqueous solution-induced precipitation originating from a transparent ethanol/water solution containing copper acetate. The density of oxygen vacancies (OVs) in CuO nanoparticles decreases with increasing water content in the synthesis system. In practice, students first synthesized two types of CuO nanomaterials with a 100% success rate, and then students observed the rapid and significant color fading at normal temperature and pressure by using two types of CuO-assisted peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activation for the oxidation of varied organic dyes (including rhodamine B (RhB), methylene blue (MB), reactive black 5 (RB5), crystal violet (CV), methyl orange (MO), and malachite green (MG)). The evaluation results of the after-class experiment show that the average score of students’ overall impression of the experiment is as high as 4.8 points (out of a full score of 5), particularly due to the vivid and rapid color change, which heightened students’ engagement and fostered a strong sense of achievement. This interdisciplinary experiment involves knowledge of catalytic chemistry, materials science, and environmental science, which is very meaningful for undergraduate students to understand the key role of OVs in catalytic materials and basic principles during AOPs. More significantly, the laboratory experiment is facile, cheap, noticeable, and fast, which is very suitable for undergraduate laboratory teaching.