Journal of Chemical Education最新文献

The “Molar Mass (or Molecular Weight) of a Volatile Liquid” laboratory is a common chemistry experiment performed by many school students, as well as college students. Usually, a “simple” variant of the Dumas bulb method is applied to determine the molar masses of volatile liquids, applying the ideal gas law. The evaluation of this classic experiment starts with a theoretical analysis of the experimental conditions. Shortcomings of the experiment’s underlying model are pointed out. A corrected model is developed targeting to bring achievable experimental results closer to “reality”. A simulation is performed, revealing how severe results deviate when using the classic experiment in the classroom, important information for educators. Experimental data confirming the theoretical considerations and simulations are provided. The results presented provide a tool to handle the common discrepancies associated with the classic Molar Mass experiment and, therefore, present a valuable teaching resource. An important aspect of this publication is to demonstrate that basic and common chemistry experiments provide a variety of science teaching opportunities. Throughout this experiment’s evaluation, instructor targeted suggestions are provided to highlight teaching opportunities at levels ranging from middle school to graduate level chemistry.

Chemistry is essential to address global challenges, like the reduction of resource consumption. One of the ways to make chemical processes more effective, environmentally friendly, and safer is through green chemistry. The associated changes inspired by green chemistry should also have an impact on chemistry education. Many researchers have called for the introduction of green chemistry in chemistry education. However, most proposals for bringing green chemistry into education only aim at the tertiary educational level. At the same time, an up-and-coming field of education focuses on game-based education in general and educational escape rooms in particular. Escape rooms can be used to promote subject content learning and to develop interdisciplinary skills playfully. This article presents a digital educational escape room on selected principles of green chemistry for high school chemistry education. The educational escape room was tested with 91 high school students. Students were motivated by the activity and learned about green chemistry on a reproducible level, but they also developed interest and positive attitudes. The students favored the more frequent use of educational escape rooms in the classroom, but some would prefer analog formats instead of digital ones.

Electrochemical energy conversion and storage devices are pivotal in transforming our society and advancing sustainability. Therefore, educating students in electrochemistry, the fundamental backbone of these technologies, is essential for preparing a new generation of professionals and raising public awareness of the role of these technologies in mitigating environmental challenges. However, a critical challenge lies in teaching electrochemistry through captivating and interactive approaches, particularly for younger learners. Herein, we outline a week-long workshop designed to immerse high school and undergraduate students in the world of electrochemical energy conversion and storage. The workshop was meticulously crafted to ensure a comprehensive exploration of electrochemistry fundamentals, operational principles of energy devices, real-world applications, and their societal impacts. Through mini-lectures, demonstrations, class discussions, educational games, and collaborative projects based on active learning, this workshop aims to improve the students’ understanding of electrochemistry and promote an appreciation for its critical role in society. Course evaluations indicate that our approach cultivates a stimulating learning environment. This initiative serves as a model for future educational programs in electrochemistry, aiming to equip students with the knowledge and inspiration needed to contribute to a sustainable future.

The consumption of electronics has increased dramatically in the past decades and so has the amount of electronic waste (WEEE or e-waste). Understanding the life cycle of an electronic product and its impact on the environment, human health, and our everyday life requires experts in different areas, such as engineering, ecotoxicology, sociology, economy, and medical sciences, who are capable of thinking with an interdisciplinary perspective. In this context, we have designed and taught the course Sustainable electronics, eco-design, and e-waste management, whose overarching goal is training and empowering new generations of professionals and users to promote the circularity of materials and the minimization of greenhouse gas emissions in the electronics sector. The course has been taught in flipped mode to ensure a continuous exchange between students and lecturers.

This work presents an automatic extruder as a research experience for undergraduate students. The system offers a user-friendly approach to preparing vesicles, such as liposomes or polymersomes, with a defined size and polydispersity─properties crucial for research in biology and macromolecules. It comprises two syringe pumps connected by a membrane filter. The setup is controlled by software. Compared to manual extrusion, this automated system provides advantages, such as precisely controlled variables. The project describes a tool to enhance undergraduate learning in science and engineering laboratories. Building an automatic extruder serves as a simplified model of a complex industrial process. It offers a clear advantage: automating a well-understood manual extrusion process. To make this project accessible, it is broken down into three manageable tasks: software development, hardware assembly, and testing procedures. This breakdown describes the software created, the hardware components used, and the testing procedures conducted for this project. All project data, including software code, testing data, and procedures, are freely available online. This allows undergraduate students to not only begin their own projects but also contribute to this educational instrument’s ongoing development.

The paradoxical situation concerning packaging materials as major sources of environmental pollution and food contamination highlights the need for a comprehensive educational approach. Polymer chemistry, food technologies, and packaging education have remained compartmentalized, favoring particular viewpoints and deflecting from the overarching problems. The collaborative project FitNESS, funded by the European Commission under the ERASMUS+ program, aims to bridge this gap by providing a robust online knowledge base accessible on all screens for current and future food packaging. The goal is to raise awareness among all professions involved through basic courses and to effectively enhance the knowledge and skills of professionals or future professionals through advanced courses on health and toxicological assessment, sustainability of packaging, multiple criteria design of safe and responsible packaging, and polymer science. New circular economy practices (reduce, collect, recycle, reuse) are particularly addressed in relation to the shelf life of food products and the risks of wastage. The content of the open-source and clonable platform (https://FitNESS.agroparistech.fr) stands as one of the most significant sources of educational content validated by more than a dozen European institutions, featuring online exercises and links to packaging design and calculation tools.

Innovation is an important approach to boost economic development and social advances, and innovative talents are the cornerstone of the development of the pharmaceutical industry. Conventional pharmaceutical education is not, however, tightly interconnected with current developments because pharmaceutical training lacks practicality and innovation. A deep integration of industry–university–research (IUR) would be a significant approach to solve this issue. In view of this, the School of Pharmacy of Jilin Medical University has thus integrated its own specialized characteristics with regional industrial strength to build a “one core, three chains, and four platforms” talent training mode, with “IUR collaborative education” as the core, “knowledge chain–capability chain–quality chain” as the inner spiral, and “teaching platform–research platform–enterprise platform–social platform” as the external spiral. Under the background of the deep integration of IUR, the quality of talent training is comprehensively improved by taking the “Double Hundred–double Entering” action as an opportunity (100 entrepreneurs enter the campus and 100 doctoral faculty members enter enterprises), relying on the Modern Pharmaceutical Industry College, using scientific research feedback teaching as the driving force and projects and competitions as the starting point. This cultivation pattern has achieved positive results in practice and effectively improved the training quality of innovative talents in our university. It can provide a reference for the talent cultivation of related majors in similar universities.

Colors generated by plasmonic nanoparticles offer ideal access to nanotechnology for regular consumers, school pupils, or students. Unlike gold as a raw material, plasmonic gold nanoparticles change color with size due to the unique interaction of the metal’s free electrons with the incident light. However, the color palette generated solely by gold nanoparticles is limited, thus limiting the user experience. Fortunately, using shapes with fewer symmetry axes and materials with lower damping can help expand the plasmonic color palette. Our research explores color perception in reflection and transmission for various types of nanoparticles, including cubic and silver nanoparticles. Our study revisits millennia-old plasmonic coloring techniques, contrasts historical methods with modern simulations, and shows integration into an existing teaching platform. This software architecture innovatively combines the open accessibility of Python with the visualization capabilities of the Unity game engine to create a user-friendly platform that transforms complex scientific computations into engaging and interactive educational applications. Finally, we systematically compared the user experiences of the teaching platform, revealing the overall positive perception of the learning concept. In such a way, we ensure that our platform is effective and provides a low-threshold way for individuals to access plasmonics using colloidal building blocks. Thereby, we create an intuitive approach to the potential of nanotechnology for everyone, making it an exciting and engaging study area.

Despite the prominence of orbitals throughout the undergraduate chemistry curriculum, high-quality visualization of atomic orbitals is out of reach for most scientists. Rigorously visualizing the atomic orbitals even for simple hydrogen-like atoms and ions is rather challenging due to the complex 3-D structure and geometric variability of the orbitals across three distinct quantum numbers. In this work, a graphical user interface (GUI)-based tool for visualizing 3-D volumetric density plots of hydrogen atomic orbitals is introduced. This tool is written in Python, and a Jupyter notebook version with explanatory blocks interspersed in the code is included for pedagogical purposes. The user can manipulate a large number of features using the GUI, which allows customization of the orbital illustrations. Because this visualizer is capable of visualizing orbitals with any quantum numbers and showing their nodal surfaces, it can serve as a supplement to students’ lecture and textbook education on this topic.

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are increasingly recognized as valuable tools for engaging students in authentic research, for removing barriers to participation in research, and for the retention of students in STEM disciplines. Recently, we developed a CURE sequence for organic chemistry students in which they conducted self-directed investigations into bio- and organocatalytic approaches to the asymmetric synthesis of warfarin, a commonly prescribed anticoagulant with the potential for serious side effects. In this CURE, students worked on a chemistry problem with implications for modern medical practice while learning fundamental techniques in organic synthesis, chromatography, and spectroscopy. While engaging students in creative research activity, this CURE also emphasized working in scientific teams, an approach that prepares students for current practices in academic and industrial research settings. Publications on the design and implementation of CUREs have increased considerably in the past decade, but the benefits to faculty research are not well-documented. This article describes the evolution of this CURE from a screening-based approach to the identification of biocatalysts for the synthesis of warfarin to a more targeted approach using small biologically inspired catalysts. The most recent iteration of the biocatalysis CURE generated results that are included in an original research pre-print publication with student coauthors (Wurz, A. I.; et al. ChemRxiv 2024, 10.26434/chemrxiv-2024-krf7h).