Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics Project part of Teaching Computation with MATLAB:MATLAB Workshop 2019:Activities
This activity is a project designed to introduce undergraduate chemical engineering students to chemical engineering thermodynamics in the context of MATLAB. The project requires students to learn concepts they ...

A Bioinformatic Look at Iron Uptake in Insects part of CUREnet:Institutes:CU Denver:Examples
Students will perform BLAST searches, make phylogenetic trees, identify putative orthologs, and investigate secondary structure elements of 5' untranslated regions (UTRs). The sequences used will be related to iron uptake in insects.

Unit 1: Use of Lead in the Environment and Health Impacts on Human Populations part of Lead in the Environment
In Unit 1, students engage in discussion of the historical use and resulting distribution of lead throughout the human environment. Activity 1.1 introduces the systems dynamics linking geology, human use, and human ...

Climate Change Mind Map part of Curriculum for the Bioregion:Activities

CCD & Calcareous Ooze Assignment part of Oceanography:Activities
The assignment pre-tests student understanding of the CCD, lysocline, calcareous ooze, and the deposition of marine sediments near mid-ocean ridges and ocean basins.

Getting a Grip on Hydrogen Bonds part of Oceanography:Activities
The purpose of this brief (~15 minutes) activity is for students to directly observe some of the unique properties of water that are the result of hydrogen bonds, such as capillary action, adhesion, cohesion, and ...

Ocean Acidification part of Oceanography:Activities
Students choose shell fragments from different species of Molluscs and calculate percent lose after soaking in different ph solutions for different periods of time. They research ocean acidification and especially ...

Environmental Justice in Tacoma: A Non-Majors Qualitative Assessment of Pollution and Public Policy in the Local Community part of Curriculum for the Bioregion:Activities
This activity is designed to get non-environmental majors to qualitatively examine their own community for evidence of environmental injustice. Using a mix of evidence from online sources (U.S. Census, EnviroMapper, Toxic Release Inventory, Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, etc.) and field observations, student groups describe the population and pollution sources found within an assigned elementary school district in Tacoma.

Is The Water Safe for Aquatic Life? part of Curriculum for the Bioregion:Activities
In this field activity students ponder sustainability issues such as point and non-point sources of pollution (including personal contributions), impacts of pollution, and potential mitigations.

An Environmental Analysis of Lake Waughop part of Curriculum for the Bioregion:Activities
Through an analysis of water quality in a nearby lake, students are introduced to basic chemical techniques such as titrations (both acid/base and oxidation/reduction), atomic absorption spectrometry, and uv/vis spectrometry

Researching Ocean Acidification in General Chemistry part of Curriculum for the Bioregion:Activities
This research-based student project used the problem of ocean acidification to cover the sustainability concept of fossil fuel combustion and the disciplinary concepts of kinetics, equilibrium, acid-base chemistry and solubility.

Hurricanes and Heat Transfer part of EarthLabs for Educators:Hurricanes
The lab activity described here was created by John McDaris of SERC for the EarthLabs project. Summary and Learning Objectives In this activity students investigate how hurricanes transfer heat by conducting ...

From Isotopes to Temperature: Working With A Temperature Equation part of Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum:General Collection:Examples
Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum module. Students build a spreadsheet to examine from a dataset the relation between oxygen isotopes in corals and the temperature of surrounding seawater.

Design2Data part of CUREnet:Institutes:Other Institutes (2019-2020):Examples
The D2D program is centered around an undergraduate-friendly protocol workflow that follows the design-build-test-learn engineering framework. This protocol has served as the scaffold for a successful undergraduate training program and has been further developed into courses that range from a 10-week freshman seminar to a year-long, upper-division molecular biology course. The overarching research goal of this CURE probes the current predictive limitations of protein-modeling software by functionally characterizing single amino acid mutants in a robust model system. The most interesting outcomes of this project are dependent on large datasets, and, as such, the project is optimal for multi-institutional collaborations.

Laser spectroscopy of atmospherically relevant molecules and clusters in helium nanodroplets part of CUREnet:Institutes:Other Institutes (2019-2020):Examples
Superfluid helium nanodroplets present an ideal medium for the study of chemical dynamics at the molecular level. Their low temperature, enormous heat conductivity, and weakly interacting nature allow for the investigation of various things, such as how molecular rotation is effected by a solvent, and how molecules interact with each other. These two topics will be addressed in the lab by (1) measuring the spectra of unexplored molecules in helium nanodroplets and determining their rotational constants; this data will then be used to test known models describing the interaction between the molecule and helium solvent, and (2) synthesizing and characterizing unexplored molecular clusters in an effort to better understand molecular solvation; students will solvate the "unexplored molecule" with an atmospherically relevant species (O2, N2, H2O), and investigate the resulting clusters with laser Stark spectroscopy.

DNA cloning and protein analysis of animal-heme peroxidase within collagen IV of the extracellular matrix part of CUREnet:Institutes:Hampton University:Hampton CURE Examples
This CURE is to expose undergraduate students to the process of DNA cloning to identify the critical amino acids of the animal-heme peroxidase,peroxidasin, responsible for catalyzing sulfilimine bond formation within collagen IV of the basement membrane. Students will bioengineer a variety of mutants through primer design and polymerase chain reactions that contain point mutations within the immunoglobulin domain of the peroxidasin.

Sensitivity of Parameters in Chaotic Systems part of Teaching Computation in the Sciences Using MATLAB:Matlab Workshop 2019:Activities
In this computer lab activity, students explore and discuss the nature of the sensitivity of parameters in a chaotic system. As a result, they understand the challenges of numerical simulation and/or parameters ...

MCC: Malate Dehydrogenase CUREs Community part of CUREnet:CURE Collection
The Malate Dehydrogenase CUREs Community (MCC) project is designed to facilitate the adoption of effective, protein‐centric, Course Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) into teaching labs at a wide variety of undergraduate serving institutions. (Primarily Undergraduate Institutions, Research Intensive Universities and Community Colleges) MCC coordinates and conducts pedagogical research into two major features of CUREs:1) their duration (whole semester versus 5‐6 week modules incorporated into a lab class), and 2) the impact of scientific collaboration between institutions (a key aspect of much modern research). Using validated assessment tools we seek to establish their effects on student confidence, persistence in STEM, and ability to design research experiments and interprete data. To facilitate faculty adoption of CURE approaches the project provides a number of resources. These focus on a variety of research areas related to Malate Dehydrogenase including mechanisms of catalysis and regulation, adaptation and evolution, cofactor specificity, folding and stability and interactions in metabolons. Resources include biologics, experimental protocols and assessment tools. The project also coordinates interactions between courses at different institutions to allow incorporation of scientific collaboration into CUREs. These collaborations also facilitate the use of more sophisticated experimental approaches and broaden the experimental scope of the CUREs.

Determining Energy Efficiency: A Lab Activity part of Curriculum for the Bioregion:Activities
Students determine the energy efficiency of different methods of heating substances in the lab and then assess the economic and environmental costs.

What is the True Cost of Burning Coal? part of Curriculum for the Bioregion:Activities
This activity is a framework for general chemistry students to explore the costs, ethics and alternatives to coal-fired electricity.