Understanding social interactions among students comprises a rich area of physics education research. Here we focus on the social interactions in introductory physics laboratories (labs). Most existing research in such contexts focuses on within-group social dynamics, however, we argue that interactions between different lab groups are just as…

There currently exists a significant deficiency in the nuclear chemistry workforce within the United States, despite its importance in areas of medicine, national security, and energy. Poor coverage of this topic across many chemistry departments at the undergraduate level likely contributes to this shortage. Increasing interest and hands-on…

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs) represent a novel type of adaptive immune system found in eubacteria and archaebacteria. CRISPRs have recently generated a lot of attention due to their unique ability to catalog foreign nucleic acids, their ability to destroy foreign nucleic acids in a mechanism that shares some…

Carbon nanomaterials have promising utility in chemical sensing including applications in preserving occupational safety, monitoring of environmental pollution, and human health. While recent advances in device fabrication and molecular design of functional materials have enabled rapid fabrication of chemical sensors from carbon nanomaterials,…

Food spoilage has an enormous economic impact, and microbial food spoilage plays a significant role in food waste and loss; subsequently, an equally significant portion of undergraduate food microbiology instruction should be dedicated to spoilage microbiology. Here, we describe a set of undergraduate microbiology laboratory exercises that focus…

Laboratory research experiences are highly impactful learning environments for undergraduate students. However, a surprising number of chemistry students do not research. These students often do not research because they lack the time, interest, opportunity, or awareness. Course-based undergraduate research experiences can reach out to these…

This paper discusses the variety of ways in which The Bakken Museum has made use of replicas or simulations of historical instruments and experiments and demonstrations in education programs and exhibits for school children, families with children, and other museum audiences. Early efforts were stimulated in the mid-1980s by a collaboration with…

For many schools, the science fair is a long-held tradition in which students are required to participate. For these children, and their families, this means 3 months of added stress to already rigorous academic demands. This article explores the methods in which students can take part in the science fair without having to sacrifice their creative…

We describe the content and organization of a series of day-long field trips to a university for high school students that connect chemistry content to issues of sustainability. The seven laboratory activities are in the areas of environmental degradation, energy production, and green chemistry. The laboratory procedures have been modified from…

A research project for senior undergraduates of chemistry has been developed to introduce syntheses of a series of monodispersed semiconductor PbS quantum dots (QDs) and their characterization methodologies. In this paper, we report the preparation of monodispersed semiconductor PbS QDs with sizes smaller than the exciton Bohr radius using a…

An eight-session interdisciplinary laboratory curriculum has been designed using a suite of analytical chemistry techniques to study biomaterials derived from an inexpensive source such as the tomato fruit. A logical progression of research-inspired laboratory modules serves to "tour" the macroscopic characteristics of the fruit and the…

Chia seeds will sprout on almost any moist surface, and they respond quickly to experimental variables. Furthermore, the newly recognized nutritional value and rich cultural history of chia seeds offer the possibility of highly motivating and educational interdisciplinary extensions, especially appropriate to students in the middle grades.…

This study reports on a content course for science immersion teacher candidates that emphasized authentic practice of science and thinking scientifically in the context of introductory astrophysics. We explore how 122 science teacher candidates spanning three cohorts did and did not reason scientifically and how this evolved in our program. Our…

We describe an interactive collaborative environmental education project that makes advanced laboratory facilities at Brookhaven National Laboratory accessible for one-year or multi-year science projects for the high school level. Cyber-enabled Environmental Science (CEES) utilizes web conferencing software to bring multi-disciplinary,…

The current research article is based on a simple and practical way of employing the computational power of widely available, versatile software MS Excel 2007 to perform interactive computer simulations for undergraduate/graduate students in biology, biochemistry, biophysics, microbiology, medicine in college and university classroom setting. To…