This review describes a computational chemistry exercise aimed at enhancing the understanding of upper-division undergraduates in organic chemistry and physical chemistry regarding the structures and aromaticities of cyclobutadiene and cyclooctatetraene. This exercise exposes students to chemical problems that require computational methods as a…

The concepts taught in an undergraduate physical chemistry course are directly related to the molecular processes governing climate change, yet the connections between quantum mechanical molecular properties and global warming are rarely made explicit. To improve student knowledge about climate change, we developed a three-part activity that…

Chemistry undergraduate curricula typically place Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) lectures under either Organic Chemistry or Spectroscopy courses, aiming for students to acquire basic knowledge for the determination of the structure of simple organic compounds. On the other hand, regarding laboratory practice, NMR is frequently disregarded by…

The classic silver mirror reaction at room temperature in textbooks usually used glucose to react with silver nitrate and ammonium nitrate with the presence of caustic alkalis. But the aldehydes such as acetaldehyde and propionaldehyde were difficult to react under the same condition. In this paper, Na[subscript 2]CO[subscript 3] was used to…

Infrared spectroscopy (IR) is a staple structural elucidation and characterization technique because of its ability to identify functional groups and its ease of use. Interestingly, it allows the capture of electronic effects via their influence on the bond strength of "probes", such as the carbonyl group and also offers a wealth of…

Protein structure-function relationship serves as the primary learning outcome in any undergraduate biochemistry course. We expanded the protein structure-function exploration, PSFE initiative during COVID-19 to provide more effective and engaging experience to our undergraduates in biochemistry and independent research courses. Multiple…

The Databank of Dynamics Trajectories (DDT, notthatddt.org) was established to assist students in visualizing the dynamical behaviors occurring during chemical reactions and conformational changes, with a focus on processes taught in introductory organic chemistry classes. Animations of reacting molecules created using "ab initio"…

Molecular modeling can be used as an excellent teaching method for providing better insight into the mechanism of free radical reactions. Due to its highly visual nature, it can affect and improve students' perception and visualization of chemistry phenomena. The majority of chemistry students will know how to represent a reaction between two free…

The understanding of complex molecular representations is crucial for comprehending molecular scientific phenomena, but many students struggle with them. Therefore, we investigated the effectiveness of short written clues in dealing with molecular representations, specifically their impact on performance, self-efficacy, and stress reactions. A…

The crystalline sponge method allows for direct and precise molecular structure determination of liquid and gaseous targets and thus has been recognized as a revolutionary breakthrough in crystallography. To expose undergraduates to this cutting-edge technique, we have developed a comprehensive laboratory experiment with reaction conditions and…

This paper investigated the effect of TRIZ ("Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch"-Theory of Inventive Problem Solving)--STEM activities customized for nanotechnology education on middle school students' problem-solving, critical thinking, and research inquiry skills. Since STEM requires both multidisciplinary work and…

This article highlights some of the challenges in explaining simple substituent effects on keto-enol equilibria, particularly to an undergraduate audience. Quantum-chemical calculations were performed to identify the role of intramolecular hydrogen bonding, inductive effects due to electron-withdrawing groups, and cross-conjugation on the…

Dilute guarana´ ("Paullinia cupana") powder aqueous extract is a soft drink that contains three structurally related methylxanthines (MXs), caffeine (CF), theobromine (TB), and theophylline (TP); CF is present in a large excess. Literature data show that values of [lambda][subscript max] and [epsilon][subscript max] of these three MXs…

The fundamental mechanism of biochemistry lies on the reaction kinetics, which is determined by the reaction pathways. Interestingly, the reaction pathway is a challenging concept for undergraduate students. Experimentally, it is difficult to observe, and theoretically, it requires some degree of physics knowledge, namely statistical and quantum…

For 20 years, Molecule of the Month articles have highlighted the functional stories of 3D structures found in the Protein Data Bank (PDB). The PDB is the primary archive of atomic structures of biological molecules, currently providing open access to more than 150,000 structures studied by researchers around the world. The wealth of knowledge…