A simple inquiry-based activity called "Fruit Puzzle" was designed to investigate high school students' understanding of the relationship between the concepts of density and solution concentration at a submicroscopic level. The first activity allowed students to predict whether five types of fruit would sink or float in water and asked…

A green chemistry experiment is presented for teaching an undergraduate quantitative analysis/analytical chemistry laboratory class through the use of black tea leaf extract for the determination of iron in supplement tablets. Dried tea leaf is a safe, low cost, and widely available source of natural extract that can be used in place of more toxic…

This activity allows students to visualize how to obtain different stoichiometries with various techniques in a single experiment. The involvement of three phases adds to the student's interest. Instructional materials are provided to facilitate the experimental procedures, interpretation of results, and error analysis. The reaction of Li from a…

Routinely used in quantitative determination of various analytes, UV-vis spectroscopy is commonly taught in undergraduate chemistry laboratory courses. Because the technique measures the absorbance of light through the samples, losses from reflection and scattering by large molecules interfere with the measurement. To emphasize the importance of…

The blue bottle experiment is a popular chemical demonstration because of its simplicity and visual appeal. Most papers on the topic focus on a new formulation or a new presentation, but only a few discuss pedagogical application for a full lab session. This article describes the use of this experiment in the first session of undergraduate…

This article demonstrates how a student research project could connect classroom and community. Using local citizens' concerns about the adulteration of cosmetics by prohibited substances as a research problem, fifth-year pharmaceutical chemistry students were challenged to use their knowledge to create cost-effective and environmentally friendly…

During the Thai high-school physics teacher training programme, we used an aluminum loop-the-loop system built by the Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology (IPST) to demonstrate a circular motion and investigate the concept of the conservation of mechanical energy. There were 27 high-school teachers from three provinces,…

Learning in the laboratory is different from learning in other contexts because students have to engage with various aspects of the practice of science. They have to use many skills and knowledge in parallel--not only to understand the concepts of physics but also to use the tools and analyse the data. The question arises, how to best guide…

To overcome students' inaccurate prior knowledge on primary additive colours, a coloured-light mixer has been constructed to enable students to observe directly the colours produced and reach the conclusion by themselves that the three primary colours of light are red, green, and blue (NOT red, yellow, and blue). Three closely packed tiny…

A low-cost celestial globe is developed to support astronomical coordinate learning. It is used for demonstrating how stars are positioned and to analyse the motion of celestial bodies or diurnal motion. The model was implemented at a weekend astronomy camp provided for students from schools in the northeastern region of Thailand. A series of…