Volume 3, Issue 4

The announcement of the rare feat of ‘unboiling an egg’ in 2015 by biochemists from University of California, Irvine and Australia was more than just a chemistry demonstration. Pulling apart tangled proteins and allowing them to refold, the new technique not only prevented ‘misfolding’, thus also eliminating the chances for formation of useless products, but also speeded up the process by a factor of thousands. This technology promised transforming industrial and research production of proteins – affecting cheese flavouring and cancer treatment alike. A survey of 50 odd students in 2020, willing to enroll for an online Food-Science Workshop revealed, 72% did not believe that such an act like ‘unboiling an egg’ was possible, leave alone its being prevalent and essential. Delving into the nuances of this ‘egg-unboiling’ technology whilst contrasting it with ‘egg-unfrying’, our Workshop Incredible Edibles introduced sustainable-science in the guise of food-science. It is how lysozyme, urea, along with Maillard reaction, amino acids and sugars came together in the discussions that determined the gentle transition of these non-believers to hard-core fanatics of chemistry −76% participants admitted to having “discovered a whole new way to look at food” in the post-session survey. This article shall elucidate these results.

The article introduces the layout of a college course on analytical chemistry for pre-service teachers. The course aims at fostering teacher students’ professional knowledge by recapitulating Core Content Knowledge, introducing Specialized Content Knowledge , and complementing it with discipline-overarching Linked Content Knowledge . Synthesizing these types of knowledge is expected to support students in their processes of meaning making. As they realize an every-day relevance of analytical chemistry they will see opportunities to relate chemical knowledge to their later school students. Regarding Linked Content Knowledge, suggestions are given to address aspects related to the Nature of Science. An exemplary lab activity to analyze the coumarin content in cinnamon is provided. Coumarin has shown adverse health effects in a non-neglectable proportion of humans. Regarding cinnamon there are two varieties of cinnamon with significantly different coumarin content: cassia is very rich in coumarin while Ceylon cinnamon is nearly void of it. The more popular cassia has been shown to be so high in coumarin that a potential risk for light weight consumers cannot be ruled out. Regarding school science, the lab activity can raise an awareness with students for the tentative, creative and socio-cultural Natures of Science – right from the students’ kitchen cabinets.

The COVID-19 outbreak has influenced virtually all aspects of our life, in particular, hundreds of millions of people around the world have been forced to study online. To observe the practical realization of emergency remote teaching of chemistry during the first wave of COVID-19 in Russia we gave the survey to 217 teachers and 355 students from more than 50% regions of Russia about their experience during distance learning of chemistry. 17% of students were lacking chemistry lessons at all. We compared this with the situation in Letovo international boarding school in Moscow and found relative success in terms of lessons adaptation and overall satisfaction compared to the Russia-wide survey. This might be because of the fine educational organization effort and implemented learning management system (LMS). There is a high probability of a second COVID-19 wave or any other occasion that may lead to sudden change to distance learning. Teacher community should learn from world-wide and country-wide experiences of the first COVID-19 wave to become prepared for future challenges. Those preparation measures may include implementing LMS and strategy development.

In this article a cross-sectional study on the students’ rating with regard to the contents in organic chemistry will be discussed. Pre-service teachers rated the contents with a questionnaire during their bachelor or master studies. It was shown that the pre-service chemistry teachers during their master studies rated the content as more important than the bachelor students. One possible explanation can be that the master students have teaching experience due to their internships at school whereas the bachelor students can only rely on their experience from their own school days. Overall, content belonging to the school curriculum in the federal state “Brandenburg” where the pre-service teachers’ university is located was rated better than content that was not a part of this curriculum. Concepts were not rated significantly better than the content. Because of the importance of conceptual knowledge for the future profession as a teacher, the courses in organic chemistry will be redesigned with a clear focus on concepts.

Females and students of non-dominant ethnicity are less likely to aspire to science careers. However, overcoming discrimination in science and chemistry is a challenging task, especially in vocational orientation. Thus, there is a need for strategies to support young women in their identity formation in science and chemistry. This article presents a scheme for supporting young women’s science identity formation in conversations about vocational orientation. The goal is to support young women in developing a positive attitude towards careers in chemistry. This attitude is part of cultural chemistry capital. The scheme was developed based on a study conducted as part of the project DiSenSu. Here, coachings for vocational orientation for young women in science and chemistry are provided, following the idea of Science in Public. In the coaching, the attitudes towards science and chemistry were determined using quantitative data. Based on these results, coaches conducted conversations with the participants. Qualitative analysis of 11 conversations revealed strategies coaches used to support young women in their vocational orientation. The study shows how the participants’ attitude towards careers in chemistry is used as a starting point for coachings. Also, it provides strategies that can be used to promote young women’s cultural chemistry capital.

The fundamental concepts for organic reaction mechanisms inventory (FC-ORMI) is a multiple-choice instrument designed to assess students’ conception of fundamental concepts for understanding organic reaction mechanisms. The concepts were identified from open-ended interviews and a national survey of organic chemistry instructors reported in a previous study. This manuscript describes the development of the inventory items related to these identified concepts and the psychometric analysis of the instrument. In the developmental stage, open-ended questions were administered to first-semester organic chemistry students ( N  = 138), and open-ended interviews were conducted with students ( N  = 22) from the same pool to gain insight into their thought processes. The answers revealed alternate conceptions which were used to formulate distractors for the inventory. A pilot version and a beta version of the inventory were administered to 105 and 359 first-semester organic chemistry students, respectively. From these administrations, the 26-item alpha version was developed and administered to first-semester undergraduate organic chemistry students ( N  = 753). Psychometric analysis was conducted at the item and test level using Classical Test Theory and Rasch analysis. The results indicate that the items on the FC-ORMI function well to reveal students’ alternate conceptions. The instrument meets the acceptable standards of validity and reliability for concept inventories.

Static visual representations (VRs) of chemical structures are necessary for an understanding of chemical bonding, a topic which continues to lead to learning difficulties and misconceptions for many students. The efficacy and problems associated with the use of VRs of chemical structures and chemical bonding in the form of electrostatic potential maps resulting from accurate quantum mechanical calculations are the subject of this study, which involved a sample of first year, second semester students, studying the elective course “Science Education” ( N  = 31). Students distinguished between nonpolar and polar covalent bonding, however, they encountered difficulties with concepts related to ionic bonding. Most students did not employ multistructural thinking (in the sense of the SOLO taxonomy), when providing explanations about the variation of bond polarity. Persistence of a covalent-ionic bond dichotomy was apparent, while for some, ions can be involved in both ionic and covalent bonding. Many students preferred to use their established high school knowledge. On a positive note, many students were clearly affected by the information provided by the colored VRs. Finally, the minimal experience of our students with these VRs leads us to believe that a more systematic and extensive coverage would be likely to produce improved outcomes.

There is an overarching theme in Science Education to integrate in the school and university curriculum interdisciplinary state-of-art innovations. The field of Nanotechnology is such an example, because it combines the aforementioned interdisciplinarity and novelty with a well-documented educational value. Herein, a novel teaching approach concerning size-dependent properties at the nanoscale for chemistry and physics undergraduate students is proposed. The analysis of the scientific content and its following reconstruction for teaching purposes is based on the theoretical framework of the Model of Educational Reconstruction (MER). This analysis yielded two fundamental concepts and a series of activities that can be the main core of teaching Nanotechnology at a university level.

This paper presents a student-designed one-pot electroless deposition of Bi extracted from a Pepto Bismol ® tablet by galvanic displacement of the Zn coating of a galvanized iron nail. This experiment relies on a readily accessible and reasonably safe method and materials and it has been used during the present COVID pandemic as a hands-on activity with higher education students (i.e., Junior and Senior Chemical Engineering students). Its simplicity should allow its use with High School students as well. The entire procedure can be completed in 30–45 min.

Catalytic converters (automotive catalysts) and the chemical reactions they catalyze appear in general and introductory chemistry textbooks. Although the detailed mechanisms of the chemical reactions that occur in catalytic converters have been clearly revealed via recent developments in surface and computational chemistry research, the description and illustration of the catalysis are still ambiguous in textbooks. In this paper, we describe an extracurricular lecture whereby a handmade teaching aid was employed to illustrate the basic principle of the catalytic oxidation of carbon monoxide over platinum surface, which is an essential reaction occurring in catalytic converters. The teaching aid, constructed combining easily available materials, can illustrate the positions and motions of the molecules on the platinum surface during catalytic oxidation. The lecture was favorably received by non-chemistry majors and high school students. Despite the difficulty of the topic, the audience displayed a relatively high level of understanding.