Using current research and real-life scenarios to motivate students to understand chemistry principles is a key strategy in learning and teaching. An illustration of psychoactive drugs referred to as "legal highs" used in the U.K. and Europe is presented to highlight key chemistry principles and relate the importance of chemistry…

The "cat-and-mouse game" between those who enable athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) and those who try to detect such use provides a wealth of interesting examples for the undergraduate chemistry and biochemistry classroom. In this article, we focus on several commonly used PEDs, including amphetamine, anabolic steroids,…