The COVID-19 pandemic emphasized the importance of peer communication networks for student outcomes. Herein, we describe the use of supplemental instructional videos created by former students and integrated into electronic lab notebooks, to restore the lost community-learning component using student voices in a de-densified upper-division…

A revised version of a traditional physical chemistry laboratory experiment has been developed to enhance student discussion in the laboratory and to improve students' connections between physical chemistry concepts and real molecular systems. In this experiment, students explore the keto-enol tautomerization of 2,4-pentanedione. However, unlike…

Few laboratory exercises exist that introduce undergraduate students to both the concepts and instrumentation used in rotational spectroscopy. Because of this gap in undergraduate laboratory training, a teaching laboratory for the pure rotational spectroscopy of benzonitrile has been developed and reported. Owing to benzonitrile's recent discovery…

Experimental methods for determining 3-D atomic structures, such as crystallography, are rarely taught in the undergraduate curriculum, yet are considered to be the norm for 3-D structure determination in a research setting. Although a fully physical understanding of crystallography takes years of practice, practical applications and basic…

A new project-based laboratory (PJBL) was developed for general chemistry students to tackle the steps involved in chemical water quality analysis using an accessible, real-world hydrologic system (the lakes of the Lower Grand Coulee, Washington). This PJBL was developed in a joint general chemistry and environmental geology course by a…

Acid-base titration laboratories are perennially offered to general chemistry students in preparation for summative assessments of their hands-on and quantitative skills in the field. Here, we present a guided inquiry-based activity focused on total titratable acidity (TTA) as alternative to standard "cookbook" titration laboratory work.…

A fluorometer is a device that measures the spectroscopic properties of fluorescent materials, and fluorometry is used widely in chemistry research settings to characterize fluorescent samples. One of the obstacles faced by undergraduate programs looking to implement fluorometer-based experiments into their laboratory curriculum is the high cost…

With the benefits of low cost, energy efficiency, and environmental protection, photocatalytic hydrogen production is considered to be the most promising technology for the development of a clean and sustainable society. However, the utilization of photocatalytically generated hydrogen is not very common yet. Therefore, tertiary education urgently…

This activity introduces droplet-based millifluidics and the usage of aqueous droplets as independent chemical microreactors for reaction-kinetics studies. Students build their own droplet generators from common macroscopic glassware and connecting parts to create trains of millimeter-sized droplets in which a redox reaction takes place. The…

The Spring 2020 semester students were faced with the challenge of adjusting how they learned in the middle of the semester, as the situation changed from instructors holding group office hours and study sessions for the upcoming midterm exams to faculty and students scrambling to gather their belongings before the impending lockdown. Immediately…

The role of the school science laboratory, once taken for granted as verification of taught theory using prescribed ('cookbook' to critics) practical activities, has become less clear since the emergence of the 'inquiry' paradigm in which the school laboratory would appear to become a make-believe science research laboratory. But a school science…

Laboratory report assignments for non-major and introductory classes can be challenging because the students are unfamiliar with the type of technical writing required and the subject matter. These issues for the student make the grading for the instructor difficult and time consuming. Determining the level of detail to require, the format, and…

An easily constructed and inexpensive polarimeter with an optical rotation angle resolution of about 0.5° is presented. It is made from small pieces of polarizing film, 2 LEDs, a protractor, and a few wires, all held in place with plastic interlocking toy bricks, such as Lego bricks. The instrument was used to demonstrate the optical rotation of…

Since the sudden emergence of COVID-19 global pandemic, all educational institutions have looked to move resources and delivery online. Some institutions had already embraced delivering instruction in this way; however, broader adaptation to this teaching style is new to many educators. While the teaching of theoretical concepts is more easily…

Students used an Excel spreadsheet and a Jupyter notebook located at https://chemcompute.org/jupyterhub/ to generate data in lieu of face-to-face laboratory instruction during COVID-19. This communication discusses strengths and weaknesses of both exercises. First, students generated absorbance data using an Excel spreadsheet, but they were…