The role of peer and teacher mediation in discussions about two original scientific texts in the final year of high school in Brazil is explored in this study. A text by James C. Maxwell, deals with the characterisation of light as an electromagnetic phenomenon, and refers to the continuous manner of the distribution of energy by radiation in…

The article proposes a new research object for a general physics course--the vapour Cartesian diver, designed to study the properties of saturated water vapour. Physics education puts great importance on the study of the saturated vapour state, as it is related to many fundamental laws and theories. For example, the temperature dependence of the…

To enhance student's understanding of basic engineering concepts, engineering education should include more active learning in its curricula. This article purposed to develop an active learning module for mechanical engineering students through a commercial finite element package. Kolb Learning Cycle was employed as the fundamental pedagogic of…

Background: We have developed several interactive virtual laboratories (IVLs) based on a sequence of agent-based molecular simulations designed to target specific threshold concepts to help students learn thermodynamics. We previously analyzed learning in the IVLs from a cognitive perspective, seeking to repair students' misconceptions; however,…

Surface modification has been considered as a fundamental item in upper-division undergraduate and master courses. Thus, the development of experiments regarding processes and characterization of surface-modification phenomena is highly desired. In this article, we propose an electrochemical and computational study of widely used…

Background: Chi and colleagues have argued that some of the most challenging engineering concepts exhibit properties of emergent systems. However, students often lack a mental framework, or schema, for understanding emergence. Slotta and Chi posited that helping students develop a schema for emergent systems, referred to as schema training, would…

Three-dimensional visualization of molecular simulations in virtual reality (VR) is an emerging teaching tool in chemical education. This work describes a VR application which can generate a 3D molecular dynamics (MD) simulation from arbitrary molecular structures and renders that MD simulation trajectory on a VR headset in real-time. This system…

High level, abstract engineering thinking and design is a subject that is hardly addressed in current curricula for secondary education. This is contradictory to the increasing need for more in depth STEM education in secondary schools dictated by the evolution of our society towards an ever more STEM based information society. In this paper an…

Students with visual impairments have the same span of cognitive abilities as their peers, but science instruction typically relies very heavily on vision. The preponderance of visually oriented and visually complex science concepts poses significant challenges to learning among students with visual impairment. This study is engaging, hands-on…

Chemical equilibrium is one of the most important concepts in chemistry. The changes in properties of the chemical system at equilibrium induced by variations in pressure, volume, temperature, and concentration are always included in classroom teaching and discussions. This work introduces a novel, geometrical approach to understanding the…

All living structures, from archaea to human, are open thermodynamic systems analysed through nonequilibrium thermodynamics. Nonequilibrium thermodynamics is a field with important applications to life sciences, which is very often left out of life science courses. A three-step method is suggested to make an easy introduction of nonequilibrium…

A new laboratory experiment investigating the ternary phase equilibrium of water-propan-2-ol-sodium chloride with one-, two-, and three-phase regions has been developed. Observations of the type and number of phases of a series of mixtures of the three components were made, and the results are then used in a systematic way to more finely choose…

Determination of thermostability of enzymes is of prime importance for their successful industrial applications and, yet, the published data has often been incompletely analyzed to assess the suitability of enzymes. It is possible to determine meaningful thermostability parameters from the routinely acquired data through a straightforward method…

Thermally activated analysis of experimental data allows considering about the structure features of each material. By modelling the structural heterogeneity of materials by means of rheological models, general and local plastic flows in metals and alloys can be described over. Based on physical fundamentals of failure and deformation of materials…

Part I of this dissertation focuses on investigations of nitrogen oxide plasma systems. With increasing concerns over the environmental presence of NxOy species, there is growing interest in utilizing plasma-assisted conversion techniques. Advances, however, have been limited because of the lack of knowledge regarding the fundamental chemistry of…