Introduction: The Roma Mentor Project has originally been the experimental educational model of Open Society Institute for multiply disadvantaged Roma and non-Roma youth in the period 2006-2013. Following the closure of OSI's experimental and alternative educational projects, it has been run further, during the 2016/17 academic year, with the…

The creation and use of models in science is of great importance for knowledge production and communication. For example, toy models are often used as idealized explanatory models in physics education. Models can be a powerful tool for exploring phenomena in ways that facilitate learning. However, careful consideration of instruction and…

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) project refers to experiments conducted to address problems, make improvements, or discover new things in those fields that can be tested using the scientific method. This paper describes a long-term STEM project in which pre-service science teachers (PSSTs) have a chance to discover new…

Teaching alternating currents, ac or sound waves, is incomplete without an introduction to the oscilloscope. An oscilloscope is a tool that graphically displays electrical signals and shows their time dependence. However, due to the pandemic, triggered by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, many students do not have the opportunity to master the use of an…

This study reports on a case study about multimodal work in a primary physics classroom focusing on forces. Previous research reports that students benefit from multimodal work in science classrooms. Yet, few systematic studies have been performed to reveal how students represent their experiences and ideas of science phenomena over time within…

In this study, we analyzed how general chemistry students generated experimental designs corresponding to general chemistry questions such as the ones typically found in general chemistry textbooks. We found that students were very successful in including experimental design aspects that were explicitly mentioned in the general chemistry…

Here we showcase an undergraduate teaching laboratory in which students synthesize and characterize colloidal nanoparticles of organic semiconductors and assess their suitability for applications in printed electronics such as solar cells and bioelectronics. Scanning electron microscopy, UV-visible spectroscopy, and photoluminescence spectroscopy…

In pharmaceutical laboratory teaching and learning, students' written reports allow them to document their understanding. Therefore, feedback on these reports is crucial for the students' continued learning. This study investigates written feedback on laboratory reports and compares the students' perceptions with teachers' intentions. The study is…

The carbonyl group of an aldehyde or ketone reacts with different types of nucleophiles through a nucleophilic addition reaction. When the nucleophile is water, the product obtained is a "gem"-diol or geminal diol. This functionalization is unstable and quickly reverts to the parent carbonyl group. The chemistry of "gem"-diols…

Enzyme-like catalysis is the use of artificial catalysts to catalyze chemical reactions, which has the characteristics of enzymatic catalysis, such as high selectivity, high efficiency, and mild reaction conditions. In recent years, 2D materials, thickness ranging from a single to several atomic layers, have become a hot research topic in the…

In today's global economy, the origin of the food we eat is becoming more and more difficult to identify. Verifying the authenticity of products to protect supply chains is a complicated problem that requires a multidisciplinary approach. Chemical authentication of foodstuffs often includes a mass spectrometer detector; however, they are costly…

Learning in chemistry laboratories has long been challenging due to the complex nature of the learning environment and tasks that students engage with. Therefore, it is important to develop useful tools for prelab and follow-up activities besides the hands-on lab time for better management of the learners' cognitive load. In this paper, we…

Potash, an essential raw material of the 18th century, used to be produced from the ashes of plants. Known since antiquity, it was in 1807 that Humphry Davy put an end to the decades-long controversy about its nature as a compound. The technology behind potash production was implemented in Brazil by the Portuguese naturalist Frei Velloso. The…

This laboratory experiment consists of the synthesis of two series of alkaline-earth titanates (calcium-strontium and strontium-barium)to corroborate Vegard's law by obtaining their X-ray diffraction patterns and plotting the lattice parameter versus mole fraction of both cations. This experiment allows students to understand the key concepts in…

A [beta]-lactam, the core structure unit of clinically important antibiotics such as penicillin and cephalosporin, is one of the most commonly encountered four-membered heterocycles in organic chemistry and is widely used in medicine and biochemistry. The Kinugasa reaction, a copper­(I)-catalyzed cycloaddition of a terminal alkyne with a nitrone,…