Understanding the general ideas and methods of detecting molecular structures is essential in high school chemistry. However, there is a need for more practical activities in teaching. A hands-on activity was designed in this study, which uses flexible foam balls and long sticks such as knitting needles to imitate how scientists construct the 3D…

The basic knowledge of chemical formula writing is fundamental for chemistry students, yet many still struggle to learn it. To provide a more interactive and engaging approach that facilitates and reinforces student understanding of chemical formulas and stoichiometry of chemical reactions, we have designed a chemical jigsaw puzzle. Only eight…

Health-related career goals are popular among high school science students, yet few understand the application of chemistry and biology research to the field of medicine and its impact on society. In this five-day multidisciplinary summer camp, high school students learn about the real-world relevance of medicinal chemistry research and its…

Molecules and Computer: Chemistry Calculations in Class (MC[superscript 4]) is a computational laboratory intended for final-year high school or undergraduate students. The topic is the antioxidant potential of anthocyanidins, which is chemically related to their radical scavenging action via the mechanism of hydrogen atom transfer (HAT). This…

In contrast to a macroscopic solid, the color and spectroscopic properties of gold nanoparticles change with size. Here, we propose a teaching platform for high school students (hereafter defined as students, attending secondary school in Europe, preparatory high schools in the US, or any educational institution of a comparable level) that…

The abstract nature of physical chemistry and spectroscopy makes the subject difficult to comprehend for many students. However, bridging arts and science has the potential to provide innovative learning methods and to facilitate the understanding of abstract concepts. Herein, we present a high-school project based on the conversion of selected…

An instructional approach is presented for teaching the mole concept to high school introductory-level chemistry classes. Extensions to the strategy are presented for more advanced classes. The strength of the approach is based upon discovery. Students discover the Avogadro number and the mole concept. The discovery is based upon calculations that…

This article focuses on the case study of the concept of covalent bonding for 10th grade pupils in France. On the basis of their conceptions and difficulties, didactical engineering has been established that should lead to an improvement in the understanding of this concept. After analyzing the pupils' difficulties, we reflected on the…

An application for visualizing the dynamic properties of an equimolar binary mixture of isotropic reactive particles is presented. By introducing a user selectable choice for the activation energy, the application is useful to demonstrate qualitatively that the reaction rate depends on the above choice and on temperature. The application is based…

Despite the importance of organic chemistry to human health and quality of life, very few outreach programs have been successful in communicating this message. This contributes to negative public perceptions of organic chemistry and obscures the enormous advances in quality of life engendered by organic synthesis. New chemical outreach programs…

The chemistry of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), a new class of emerging crystalline porous solids with three-dimensional (3D) networks composed of metals and multidentate organic molecules, was introduced by using three differently shaped crystals. We reported new and mild MOF synthesis methods that are simple and devised to be performed in high…

Gold nanoparticles are exciting materials in nanotechnology and nanoscience research and are being applied across a wide range of fields including imaging, chemical sensing, energy storage, and cancer therapies. In this experiment, students will synthesize two sizes of gold nanospheres (~20 and ~100 nm) and will create gold nanostars utilizing a…

Sets of models of molecules (which are of interest for teaching molecular structure, symmetry, and related topics in many chemical disciplines) were prepared and made available either for self-directed 3D-printing or through the 3D-printing company Shapeways providing 3D-printing as a service. This allows teachers to save time on searching for…

In recent years, nanotechnology has been one of the major subjects of scientific and technological research. Currently, several applications of nanotechnologies are already available on the market. Particularly relevant are the fields of new materials and sensors, which have excellent potential future applications in the biomedical field. This…

Three-dimensional visualization of molecular simulations in virtual reality (VR) is an emerging teaching tool in chemical education. This work describes a VR application which can generate a 3D molecular dynamics (MD) simulation from arbitrary molecular structures and renders that MD simulation trajectory on a VR headset in real-time. This system…