Chemicals are characteristic of chemistry education practices at all educational levels. The aim of this study is to explore teachers' didactic rationales when reasoning about the use of chemicals in their teaching practice. Experienced upper secondary chemistry teachers in Sweden were interviewed about their considerations regarding why, when,…

Teaching through experiments has always been an indispensable teaching method in chemistry and other STEM disciplines. Letting more students have access to experiments at the frontier of scientific research is essential to stimulating students' interest in chemistry. With the advancement of computer technology, virtual simulation experiments…

This work presents a simple protocol that demonstrates the use of an inexpensive household carbon monoxide detector as a useful tool to detect the release of carbon monoxide gas from thermal cheletropic decarbonylation reactions. The carbon monoxide detection method described has been employed in a short series of reactions used in a university…

A suitable combined laboratory experiment can involve more chemical disciplines and form students' views on practical connections. A laboratory experiment has been prepared focusing on the adsorption of the dangerous Co(II) ion using natural adsorbents representing waste material of a polysaccharide and keratin nature. Efficiency of Co(II)…

With the advancements in broad-spectrum sunscreens and the recent bans on benzene-based sunscreens due to their environmental toxicity, there has been a push toward broad-spectrum sunscreens containing in organic active ingredients. In this study, a procedure was developed to analyze the particle size and size distribution of inorganic active…

Awareness of best safety practices in the industrial sector will allow students in chemistry and chemical engineering programs to apply these approaches to their own safety assessments. Process safety is a critical function within the pharmaceutical industry to ensure safety when performing reactions. An introduction to process safety and a series…

Laboratory safety is a vital part of a chemical education and can be incorporated into courses throughout the chemistry curriculum. Discussions of laboratory safety can serve as an introduction to the important field of green chemistry. Exposure to this field can better prepare students for safer and more sustainable laboratory practices in…

General chemistry students need to understand the concept of intermolecular forces and use them to predict the properties of materials. To do this, they must create symbolic representations of molecules, relate these to physical observations, and explain them using submicroscopic theoretical constructs. When these concepts are taught separately,…

Selecting less hazardous chemicals is a core tenet of green chemistry but is difficult to teach in practice. The upper-year undergraduate or graduate level exercise described here empowers students to make such decisions themselves. Students are tasked with finding the greenest chemical for a specific purpose described in a hypothetical scenario,…

Rovibrational spectroscopy is a fundamental component of most physical chemistry curricula. This article describes an adaption of the rovibrational spectroscopy of carbon dioxide experiment that can be used as a stand-alone experiment or in conjunction with a traditional hydrogen chloride experiment. The case is made that the laboratory…

A systems thinking approach to incorporating green chemistry and safety into laboratory culture is vital, as chemists will be at the molecular level of the innovative solutions to our global challenges. Training chemists to have the skills and culture to accomplish this feat in the safest way possible is pivotal to safe working conditions within…

The most important indicator of meaningful learning in science education is that the students learn and often encounter in their daily life in the description. To be able to implement this, students need to be a good science literate. This study was carried out in order to reveal to what extent the teacher candidates can explain the relationship…

Due to the unique and advantageous physiochemical properties of nanoparticles, they have been increasingly incorporated into consumer products and emerging technologies. The manufacture, wear and tear of use, and disposal of these nano-enabled products will likely result in the release of nanoparticles into the environment. Unfortunately,…

A summer workshop was offered to inner-city high school students to explore the sustainability of their consumer choices using a systems thinking model. Students learned about related environmental or health issues due to the manufacturing, use, or disposal of common household products. Then, in the laboratory, they performed experiments to…

This article examines the tensions that arose as teachers, scientists, youth, and community organizers worked to develop a curriculum that was responsive to community concerns and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Within the context of urban heavy metal contamination and building on previous critiques of the standards, we identified…