In the field of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), technologies have made huge progress during the last years and also reached the field of education. The virtuality continuum, ranging from pure virtuality on one side to the real world on the other, has been successfully covered by the use of immersive technologies like head-mounted…

This article investigates how interactive representations can be used to enhance conceptual learning. It is a naturalistic study of 14 students in four groups aged 16--17 years working with an interactive simulator. The article is based on qualitative data to enable analyses of the students' processes of conceptual learning as interactive…

Difficulties encountered by teachers in giving a definition of the term "energy", and by students in grasping its actual meaning, reflect the lengthy process through which the concept eventually came to maturity around 1850. Tracing the history of this process illuminates the different aspects covered by the term and shows the important…

We propose an experiment for investigating how objects cool down toward the thermal equilibrium with their surroundings. We describe the time dependence of the temperature difference of the cooling objects and the environment with an exponential decay function. By measuring the thermal constant t, we determine the convective heat-transfer…

We present experiments giving new insights into the classical light-emitting pickle experiment. In particular, measurements of the spectra and temperatures, as well as high-speed recordings, reveal that light emission is connected to the polarity of the electrodes and the presence of hydrogen.

Wind musical instruments are affected in their intonation by temperature. We show how to account for these effects in a simple experiment, and provide results in languages accessible to both physics and music professionals.

The aim of this laboratory exercise is to present a high school hands-on laboratory experiment, focused on obtaining and investigating the properties of various polymorphic forms of aluminum oxide. Amphoterism plays a key role when discussing the law of periodicity and periodic changes of acid-base properties of elements and their compounds. In…

Interdisciplinary experiments are being offered in upper-division chemistry laboratory courses in an attempt to encourage students to make a connection between techniques learned in one discipline to affirm chemical principles that form the basis of chemical reactions in another chemistry discipline. A new interdisciplinary experiment is described…

College chemistry faculties might not have considered including isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) in their majors' curriculum because experimental data from this instrumental method are often analyzed via automation (software). However, the software-based data analysis can be replaced with a spreadsheet-based analysis that is readily…

This study focuses on students' understandings of a liquid-gas system with liquid-vapor equilibrium in a closed system using a pressure-temperature ("P-T") diagram. By administrating three assessment questions concerning the "P-T" diagrams of liquid-gas systems to students at the beginning of undergraduate general chemistry…

The molar entropy of mixing yields values that depend only on the number of mixing components rather than on their chemical nature. To explain this phenomenon using the logic of chemistry, this article considers mixing of distinguishable particles, thus complementing the well-known approach developed for nondistinguishable particles, for example,…

The ability of our society to make informed energy-usage decisions in the future depends partly on current science and engineering students retaining a deep understanding of the thermodynamics of heat engines. Teacher imaginations and equipment budgets can both be taxed in the effort to engage students in hands-on heat engine activities. The…

In science education research, there is a growing body of studies focusing on the role of multiple representations in pupils' learning. This study is based on a social semiotic perspective and in the analysis, there is a special focus on how the content is conveyed and how relations are created through interaction between teachers/pupils and the…

This paper aims to enable schools to make their own low-cost temperature logging instrument and to learn something about its calibration in the process. This paper describes how a thermistor can be integrated into a simple potential divider circuit which is powered with the sound output of a computer and monitored by the microphone input. The…

The procedure of a physical chemistry experiment for university students must be designed in a way that the accuracy and precision of the measurements is properly maintained. However, in many cases, that requires costly and sophisticated equipment not readily available in developing countries. A simple, low-cost experiment to determine isobaric…