Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Forensics Lab

 

This final lab project, contributed by the Cornell Center for Teaching Excellence, utilizes the techniques learned throughout the semester in the lab as well as the concepts learned in the lecture portion of the class.  The project involves a person breaking into a building and leaving the exhumed body of the dead college founder and a threatening note in a classroom.  Evidence such as fingerprints, hair, fibers, shoeprints and glass are left at the crime scene.

... Read more about Forensics Lab

Our Habitable World

 

Created by Khoa Nguyen, Michal Brylinski, Benjamin Maas, Kristy Stensaas, Suniti Karunatillake, Achim Herrmann, and Wolfgang Kramer, this teachable unit aims to implicitly enable scientific modeling skills among the students. With developing a conceptual model from a set of observations as the underlying goal, variations in atmospheric oxygen content provides context.

... Read more about Our Habitable World

Thalidomide: The Pros and Cons

 

This case study, contributed by the Cornell Center for Teaching Excellence, is intended to show that two enantiomers can have different effects on the body, and how the same drug can be used to treat different diseases or symptoms.  It is also intended to help students begin to understand the process of FDA approval for drugs.  This problem could be used in an organic chemistry class or in a class for non-science majors.

... Read more about Thalidomide: The Pros and Cons