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Journal Article

The Green Room: The Green Chemistry Laboratory

When it comes to making chemistry labs greener, there are two overarching goals: to reduce the consumption of energy and resources and reduce the production of hazardous and nonhazardous waste. Clearly, these two goals are inextricably linked. What i...

Journal Article

Art Instruction in the Botany Lab: A Collaborative Approach

Good observations are often fundamental to good science, and drawing has long been recognized as a tool to develop students’ observation skills. Yet when drawing in illustrated journals was introduced into botany laboratories in an undergraduate, t...

Journal Article

Natural Resources: Seasons Change

Fall catches our attention, sometimes in subtle ways. A brisk wind, a seed pod. Consider the nondescript tree that you never notice until its golden or garnet leaves flutter to the ground. For those of us who don’t like cold weather, the beauty of ...

Journal Article

Reuse That Notebook!

How many scientists throw out their notebooks at the end of each year and start over no matter how many empty pages remain? How many of them approach a new research question or experiment without using knowledge gained from the previous years? The an...

Journal Article

Nature Detectives

Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods (2008) added to a growing consensus to get children outside and experiencing nature. Using ideas from place-based education, the authors present a simple year-long project that brings science, nature, and othe...

Journal Article

Model-Based Inquiry

Model-Based Inquiry (MBI) is an emergent instructional strategy that is gaining acceptance among science educators. This approach to learning realistically mirrors the work of scientists, who develop and test hypotheses to construct more sophisticate...

Journal Article

Editor’s Roundtable: Model behavior

Models are manageable representations of objects, concepts, and phenomena, and are everywhere in science. Models are “thinking tools” for scientists and have always played a key role in the development of scientific knowledge. Models of the solar...

Journal Article

Science 2.0: Instant Inquiry

Since 2008, several digital cameras have offered high-speed movie settings that allow video to be captured at 120 to 1,000 frames per second. That means you can play back a 1-second, real-time event in slow motion that spans 5, 10, 24, or even 40 sec...

Journal Article

Scope on the Skies: Rocks, robots, and ices

Solar system exploration in November includes flybys of Saturn’s moons, a comet, and the next-to-last launch of a space shuttle before the shuttle program ends. In addition, on November 1 and 29 before sunrise, the waning crescent Moon will be clos...

Journal Article

Favorite Demonstration: Using Magnets, Paper Clips, and Ball Bearings to Explore Molecular Geometries

The valence-shell electron-pair repulsion model (VSEPR model) provides a simple way of predicting the molecular geometries. However, the particularly challenging part in demonstrating the VSEPR models is to show the “best” arrangement of bonding ...