Problem solving is a highly valued skill in chemistry. Courses within this discipline place a substantial emphasis on problem-solving performance and tend to weigh such performance heavily in assessments of learning. Researchers have dedicated considerable effort investigating individual factors that influence problem-solving performance. The…

Communication skills and insights form an important basis for employability and participation in society. Universities aim to produce graduates with effective communication skills. Effective oral communication is critical for the advancement and sharing of scientific knowledge. There is increasing recognition within tertiary institutions of the…

In the natural world, learning emerges from the joy of play, experimentation, and inquiry as part of everyday life. However, this kind of informal learning is often difficult to integrate within structured educational curricula. This report describes an educational program that embeds naturalistic learning into formal high school, college, and…

There is no agreement about the robustness of intuitive representations of the circulatory system and their susceptibility to change by instruction. In this paper, we analyse to what extent students with varying degrees of biology instruction and different ages (High School Health Science and Social Science students and first and final year…

Two exam questions are presented. One suitable for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate courses in organic chemistry, is on equivalent expressions for the description of several pericyclic reactions. The second, for general chemistry students, asks for an estimation of the rate of decay of a million-year-old Uranium-238 sample. (BB)

Presents questions and answers to the 1985 British Physics Olympiad (BPhO) Competition. Comments about the competition (the second year of British participation) and the winners who went to Yugoslavia (and placed second behind the USSR) are included. (JN)

Presents four questions (and provides answers) related to biology and chemistry. Items are concerned with genes, sodium transport, osmosis, and early earth history. (RH)

Presents five questions with answers regarding chemistry and living systems and ecology. (RH)

Presents questions and answers pertaining to yeast fermentation, oxygen content of the air, nutritional requirements of hot water bacteria, the hydrolysis of acetyl coenzyme A, and the stratified distribution of life in the Black Sea. (MLH)

Questions and answers to biochemistry four topics are presented. Items include fatty acid synthesis, reaggregation of sponge cells, enzymic degradation of pollutants, and energy requirements of organisms. (RWH)

Three questions and answers involving chemistry are presented. Question one involves elimination of reptiles from the earth; the second considers chemical effects on taste acuity; the third relates to muzzle velocity of a projectile fired from a gun and temperatures inside the cartridge. (MLH)

Examples of the presentation and solution of variations on a common projectile trajectory problem are presented. (BB)