This paper provides seven topics on sodium hydrogen carbonate (NaHCO[subscript 3]) and its ions for readers looking for familiar material phenomena to strengthen students' understanding of the chemical concepts of thermodynamics. The first concept is the ideal gas law, followed by the van't Hoff equation, Gibbs energy, pH change, chemical…

We present an analysis of the new French curriculum on chemical changes describing the underlying models and highlighting their relations to the empirical level. The authors of the curriculum introduced a distinction between the chemical change of a chemical system and the chemical reactions that account for it. We specify the different roles of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of case studies on Primary School Teaching students' attitudes toward chemistry lesson. The study was conducted on 63 freshmen from Department of Primary School Teaching at a university in Turkey. The students were taught using case studies about the subjects of Properties and States of…

Students within the Findlay, Ohio, City School District, as well as students across the country, struggle with understanding physical and chemical changes. Therefore, in this article, the authors suggest some standards-based activities to clarify misconceptions and provide formative assessments to measure your students' progress as they determine…

The goal of this study was to create an accessible, inexpensive, and engaging experiment to teach high school and undergraduate chemistry or biology students about intermolecular forces and how they contribute to the behavior of biomolecules. We developed an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to probe specific structure-function…

Teachers tend to instruct topically, which requires the student to use multiple and interconnected concepts to succeed in each instructional unit. Therefore, it is beneficial to combine research on related concepts to form topic driven instruments to better assist teachers in assessing and instructing students. Chemical and physical change as a…

Recent progress in elucidating chemical reactions allows to explain chemistry by the potential energy of the involved chemical structures. Nevertheless, from an educational point of view, empirical results indicate that students often do not connect the core idea of energy with other chemical concepts. From a resource-oriented perspective,…

It is well known that laboratory applications are of significant importance in chemistry education. However, laboratory applications have generally been neglected in recent educational environments for a variety of reasons. In order to address this gap, this study examined the effect of a virtual chemistry laboratory (VCL) on student achievement…

Research suggests that connecting the visible (macroscopic) world of chemical phenomena to the invisible (particulate) world of atoms and molecules enhances student understanding in chemistry. This approach aligns with the science standards and is fundamental to the redesigned AP Chemistry curriculum. However, chemistry is usually taught at the…

This paper analyses the perceptions of a group of children aged between 9 and 11 that emerge when they imagine a chemical change and explain it through drawings. Our investigation stems from broader research at primary school level, aimed at developing children's capacities to model changes in the structure of materials through stimulating the use…

Thirty-six pupils from three sixth-grade classes (ages 11/12, n = 75) in Greece were interviewed pre- and post-intervention in a piece of research on explanations of chemical phenomena. Software concerning chemical phenomena was incorporated in a teaching scheme, where the particle theory was used. After a 13 hour intervention, pupils'…

Design-based learning is considered a powerful way to help students apply and develop understanding of science concepts, but research has shown that the success of this approach is not a given. Examining students' understanding of science concepts in various design-based learning contexts has thus continued to be an important field of research. To…

For this activity, high school chemistry students compete in a cooking contest. They must determine the chemical and physical changes that occur in the food they prepare, present their recipe as a step-by-step procedure similar to a lab procedure, identify chemicals in the food, and present all measurements in both metric and English units. The…

This paper proposes a model-based notion of "submicro representations of chemical reactions". Based on three structural models of matter (the simple particle model, the atomic model and the free electron model of metals), we suggest there are two major models of reaction in school chemistry curricula: (a) reactions that are simple…

A hands-on, minds-on inquiry chemistry experiment was developed for use in K-12 schools that enables students to combine the chemicals of their choice and observe the results. The chemistry involved is water based and builds upon acid-base, double displacement, and iodometric detection of starch reactions. Chemicals readily available in the…