Since the outbreak of COVID-19, small-molecule drugs have been developed for the treatment of COVID-19 through drug repurposing strategy. Antiviral and anti-inflammatory drugs such as lopinavir/ritonavir and chloroquine phosphate were timely found to be suitable for the treatment of COVID-19. This article reviews the application of several typical drugs in the fight against COVID-19.

Aiming to cultivating elite talent of coating industry, this paper puts forward the teaching method reform of functional coating course from four aspects: textbook selection, teaching content, teaching method and assessment method. By compiling textbooks and elaborately choosing teaching contents, the scientific research achievements, scientific frontier knowledge, life scenes and news events were combined with book knowledge to make the class more interesting and attract the students’ attention. Discussion and exchanging role were employed to enhance the interactivity of class. By improving the evaluation process and deepening the reform of examinations, the lesson has become more challenging for student. After the implementation of these measurements, the course selection rate and attendance rate of the functional coating lesson have been greatly improved. In the meanwhile, the students’ interest in coating industry has been significantly increased, and more and more students choose to work in the field of paint after graduation.

In this paper, instructional design and practice of blended teaching method in physical chemistry course are introduced taking the thermodynamics of phase transformations in single componet systems as an example. The course concept was carried out in every teaching and learning processes before, during and after class. Driven by problems and cases, the applicability, universality and cutting edge of the basic methods of physical chemistry are embodied, so the students can acquire principles, experience explorations, develop thinking and generate wisdom. Students’ evaluation result of teaching quality shows that most students gave positive responses to the blended teaching method.

The online course should provide guidance, combing, counselling and supplementary of the content of offline classroom, and dedicate to the cultivation of students’ ability and subject literacy. In the case of the online course “The Second Law of Thermodynamics and Carnot Engine”, problem-chain method was adopted to strengthen the interaction between teachers and students, expounding the important role and position of Carnot engine in the formation of the second law of thermodynamics, and emphasizing the important contribution of Carnot to thermodynamics, which contributes to students’ exploratory spirits and subject literacy. This paper can provide teaching cases and design ideas for online courses.

This article expounds the curriculum design ideas and framework of problem-oriented online teaching, and explores online teaching methods from passive teaching to active learning,taking the principles of chemical engineering course of specialty chemical pharmacy as an example. Through the teaching design of the chapter of “fluid flow and conveying unit”, the process and implementation of online teaching centered on “problems” are discussed from three teaching links of pre-class, in-class and after-class,and the online teaching effect is also explained.

The response surface analysis method and its applicability were introduced in this paper. We designed a method to study the influence of the four factors of reaction conditions on the extraction rate in microwave-assisted extraction. They are extraction temperature, extraction time, ratio of the material to liquid and proportion of acetone respectively. Each factor was corresponding to 5 levels. This method used the extraction value of unsaturated fatty acids in grains as the response value. The optimized experimental conditions were applied to the experimental course for undergraduate. The introduction of response surface analysis method can effectively optimize the reaction conditions of the experiment and reduce the cost of the experiment. Also, it can help students understand the concept of experimental design and form their scientific and integrated experiment-design thinking.

In this paper, the preparation experiment of Dawson polyoxometalate was designed. At the same time, the latest research result, the hydrothermal synthesis of ligand, transition metal ion and Dawson polyoxometalate, was introduced to obtain the POMs-based coordination polymer, which was then characterized by X-ray powder diffraction, IR spectrum and TG analysis. This experiment could not only let the students understand the POMs-based coordination polymer, the frontier of inorganic synthetic chemistry, but also train their scientific thinking, and enhance their ability of innovation and knowledge integration while cultivating interests in chemical research.

K₂S₂O₈ was prepared in K₂SO₄-H₂SO₄ aqueous solution as the electrolyte. Based on the reaction principle between K₂SO₄ and H₂SO₄ and the solubility of KHSO₄, the preparation method of the electrolyte was improved in this paper. After improvement, the experiment takes the advantages of short time and easy operation. Moreover, the effects of the ratio of K₂SO₄ to H₂SO₄, time, current density, and temperature on the preparation of K₂S₂O₈ were investigated using microscale experiments and single factor experiments. The results showed that the amount of drugs was reduced to at least one-fifth of the original in microscale experiments, and the microscale experiments were easily available in instruments, energy-saving and environmentally friendly with good results. The optimal conditions for preparing K₂S₂O₈ were: 50% K₂SO₄ and H₂SO₄ ratio, and 1.0 h electrolysis time, current density 1.0 A/cm² and electrolyte temperature -4 ℃. In optimal conditions, the yield was 20.7%, and the purity was 92.4%. After the teaching reform, students’ experimental interests and initiative have greatly increased. The concept of green chemistry is deepened, while the ability to design experiments and inquiry, and team awareness have been enhanced.

This paper analyzes the problems existing in the analysis chemistry laboratory resource management mode at present, puts forward a new scientific laboratory management mode of virtual-real combination and static-dynamical combination, proposes a series of management strategies, including the integration of resource, training of laboratory managers, the network information management platform.

A systematic physicochemical comprehensive experiment is designed in this paper, which includes the preparation of eco-friendly water purification materials with abandoned shells, the calculation of equilibrium adsorption capacity and the evaluation of water purification effect on different shell species. The students could not only gain knowledge on heavy metal pollution, but also get the methods to synthesis the water purification materials and to evaluate removal efficiency of metal ions using adsorption experiment. This experiment links the theoretical knowledge and real-life practices, and guides students to solve practical problems with knowledge from books, and cultivates rigorous scientific thinking and interest in physical chemistry learning.

A comprehensive innovative experiment has been designed based on the relatively advanced scientific research achievements, namely, the preparation of copper nanoparticles and its catalytic reduction performance for nitro-aromatics compounds. The experimental contents include the preparation and characterization of copper nanoparticles with a certain particle size, the study on nitro-aromatics reduction catalyzed by copper nanoparticles, and the investigation on the catalyst recycling times. This experiment can not only train students’ basic experimental operation skills, but also promote them to analyze the related instrument tests and results reasonably. Moreover, these contents are helpful to improve students’ experimental interests and practical ability, as well as to cultivate students’ innovative consciousness and team cooperation spirit.

The goal of the College of Chemistry of Beijing Normal University is to cultivate excellent chemistry teachers for middle schools in China. But there are some problems existing in the current cultivation of normal university students, such as the weak willingness of the junior students to actively acquire knowledge on teachers’ education, and the inability of the senior students to quickly adapt to their changed roles from students to pre-service teachers. By bringing the Excellent Chemistry Teachers’ Association of Beijing Normal University into the second classroom of normal university students, and carrying out classified and targeted teacher education activities for students of different grades, the College of Chemistry of Beijing Normal University is exploring the application of the Excellent Chemistry Teachers’ Association as the second classroom for normal university students majoring in chemistry, so as to realize the mutual promotion and collaborative education of the first and the second classroom. During the 2018—2019 academic year, the activities of the Excellent Chemistry Teachers’ Association and the relevant results have proved that this form meets the requirements of the College of Chemistry of Beijing Normal University for the cultivation of normal university students, and is conducive to improving their abilities on the basis of the first classroom teaching. This form of cultivating normal university students with the association as the second classroom has certain reference value to the cultivation of normal university students of other majors.

In recent years, we carried out the reforms of the teaching contents of intermediate inorganic chemistry for the government-paid normal students. The teaching practices show that the students’ learning interest has been strengthened, and their qualities of being teachers have been greatly improved.

This paper starts from phosphoenolpyruvic acid and erythrose 4-phosphate for a detailed introduction on the synthesis of chorismate, the common substrate shared by three aromatic amino acids, followed by the analysis on the uniqueness of the phenylalanine biosynthesis as an example from different subject’s perspective. Through comparing and contrasting the discrepancies and similarities of different metabolic pathways from different angles, this manuscript is aimed to work as a compass helping students to establish the methodology on learning interdisciplinary knowledge.

This paper points out that the eclipsed conformation of ethane is a transition state instead of a stable conformation in the viewpoint of theoretical chemistry and mathematical analysis. And the nature of the conception of the transition state in the process of molecular rotation isomerism is unveiled. Meanwhile, a transition state automatic searching algorithm (chain-of-states algorithm) has been implemented based on Python platform and has been applied to the search the transition state of ethane internal rotation. The eclipsed conformation of ethane searched by CPR algorithm is proved to be a transition state, which is consistent with the calculated results using Gaussian 09 program. These may shed lights to understand conformation of ethane and the conception of transition state in the teaching of chemistry in universities.

By using a questionnaire survey and higher-order confirmatory factor analysis, this study examined the structure and level of chemical fundamental ideas expressed by 410 in-service and pre-service chemistry teachers. Results showed that these chemistry teachers’ chemical fundamental ideas consisted of knowledge-oriented (i.e., ideas about element, particle, and change), methodology-oriented (i.e., ideas about classification and experimentation), and value-oriented (i.e., ideas about green-chemistry and the chemistry-society relationship) ideas. Besides, both in-service and pre-service teachers were found to express satisfactory chemical fundamental ideas, while the former outperformed the latter. Suggestions for chemistry teacher education were thus provided.

While teaching the physical chemistry for the first and second year undergraduate students, the understanding of different time scales is important in the study of the molecular reaction dynamics. Here, the expression of rate constant derived from the transition state theory was utilized to estimate the time scales of different dynamic processes, where the rotation of carbon/carbon single bond in ethane and the hydrogen bonding exchanging in water molecules were employed as the examples. The estimation of these time scales is critical for the students to gain a clear physical picture of different dynamic processes. And it also helps to strengthen their understanding of the important formulas and the applications of transition state theory in the chemical systems.

The equilibrium height of capillary rise and the energy conversion and conservation in capillary rise are discussed from the point of thermodynamics. A reversible process is designed, and thus the reduced value of Helmholtz free energy, the work done by the system against gravity and external pressure are calculated. The formulas of equilibrium height of capillary rise and Laplace equation of spherical surface are obtained. This method expands the application of thermodynamics in surface phenomena, and is helpful for students to understand the energy source of capillary rise.

This article aims to explain the mysterious phenomenon of black smoke formed in the incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons, which is usually referred to in the study of organic chemistry. This black smoke is actually one kind of black carbon whose name is soot. Its structure is based on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and it is possibly formed from clustering of resonance-stabilized radicals by radical-chain reactions. In fact, black carbon has extremely vital significance in environmental science, combustion chemistry, organic chemistry, and so on. So this article is expected to provide a supplementary for the present textbooks and learning of organic chemistry.

As an important invention in the history of science and technology, distillation technology has become an important part of the production and life in human society since ancient times. In order to fully and clearly present the development of ancient distillation technology, its development process is divided into three stages: the origin stage, the spreading and integrating stage, and the leap stage. This paper summarizes from the perspective of the distiller’s device structures and the distillation process, and it includes the contents of politics, economy, culture, geography, war plague, religious theology and national exchange. Under the background of deep integration of information technology and teaching, this paper aims to provide direct and concise historical reading materials for teachers and students in chemistry field.

The impact of education on people is profound, especially higher education. Academic disciplinary construction plays an important role in the success. Constructing a discipline is like building a Chinese honorific arch. Structure is the key of quality that assures its long-lasting charm. What are the cornerstones, the pillars and the beams of the discipline/major of Polymer Materials and Engineering? In this article, we present an honorific arch theory for disciplinary construction and share experience of best practices in the curriculum innovation of Zhejiang University and Fudan University, in hope that it could provide helpful references for sister universities in the highly desired curriculum innovations.