Highlighting the ‘missing elements’ in chemistry curricula - Chemistry World

As elementary schools coordinate broad efforts to address gaps in students’ math and reading abilities, science education can sometimes take a back seat. That lack of emphasis is reflected in a dearth of quality instructional materials for young students. Elementary school teaching often relies on “summer camp science"—flashy experiments that wow students without engaging them in larger questions, said Andrea Meyer, a 3rd through 6th grade science specialist in Boston. And it can be difficult to find curricula aligned with state standards that encourage deeper learning. Seeing Mentos explode in a bottle of Coke can be “objectively cool,” Meyer said. But watching the candy cause a reaction that rapidly forms a stream of carbon dioxide bubbles doesn’t necessarily help students learn to ask questions or connect to broader scientific concepts. “These lessons don’t necessarily teach you how to think like a scientist,” Meyer said. “They just say, ‘Look at this cool thing,’ and don’t teach you to think beyond that.”With the recent completion of a set of free, open-access K-12 science teaching materials, educators like Meyer hope lessons featuring deeper scientific thinking will spread.

The Moon is getting closer to its full phase, with more of its surface visible as the days go by. Here's what you can look for when you look up at the sky tonight. What is today's Moon phase? As of Friday, Oct. 23, NASA's Daily Moon Guide tracker tells us the Moon is in the Waxing Gibbous phase, with 90% of its surface visible. Tonight, without the use of visual aids you should be able to spot the Copernicus Crater, the Mare Serenitatis, and Mare Fecunditatis. If you have binoculars you'll also see the Endymion Crater, the Alphonsus Crater, and the Clavius Crater. Plus, if you have a telescope, you'll also see the Linne Crater, Rima Ariadaeus, and the Apollo 17 landing spot. When is the next Full Moon? The next Full Moon will take place on October 25 or 26, depending on your timezone. What are Moon phases? The Moon takes around 29.5 days to travel around Earth, and its appearance changes throughout the month. As it moves around our planet, we see different amounts of its sunlit side, from a slim crescent to the quarter phases and eventually a Full Moon. It then begins the cycle again.

Glaciers ending in lakes, oceans or ice shelves make up 3.2% of the world's glaciers, but lost 134 billion metric tons (148 billion tons) of ice each year between 2000 and 2019, accounting for more than half of all glacier ice loss, a new study shows. The team of environmental scientists found that these glaciers tend to be much larger than those ending on land, together covering more than half of the world's glacier area. But for glaciers ending in lakes, size isn't the whole story.

Every morning during the Martian spring and summer, a thin and extremely long cloud emerges, only to disappear again. The wispy formation appears near the volcano Arsia Mons and gradually elongates until it reaches over 1,000 miles—about the distance from New York to Kansas City as the crow flies—before dissipating. This cycle then repeats for several months. Since it was first recorded by a probe in 2018, scientists have been unable to find a plausible explanation for the existence of this cloud, often referred to as the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC). Until now. Recently, researchers successfully modeled the cloud’s formation for the first time, their results suggesting that it may be driven by a physical process that has never been directly observed in any planet's atmosphere. "We found that we needed to include some exotic physics … physics that, while included in textbooks, is treated as theoretical and usually thought not to happen in nature. It certainly hasn’t been seen in action before," Jorge Hernández-Bernal, a planetary scientist at Paris’ Sorbonne Université and lead author of the study, said in a press release.

The experiment Thomas Penny, Yu-Han Tseng and Cecily Lowe observe nanoparticle collisions at Yale University. (Courtesy: Yale Wright Lab) A silica nanoparticle levitated in an optical trap could be used as a tiny pressure sensor that detects collisions with individual atoms and molecules – according to researchers in the US. Their proof-of-principle demonstration originated in the team’s work in developing novel neutrino and dark-matter detectors. It could lead to the development of a background pressure sensor to work alongside other optomechanical sensors.

CARBON nanotubes synthesised using ferrocene have demonstrated antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli in laboratory experiments, suggesting potential applications for nanomaterials in antimicrobial research. Researchers found that multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) inhibited bacterial growth in a concentration-dependent manner, with both minimum inhibitory and bactericidal concentrations of 256 µg/mL. The findings highlight the antibacterial properties of the experimental preparation, although further research is needed to determine the mechanisms responsible and whether these effects could translate into practical applications.