Taking Chinese white porcelain as an example, the chemical changes hidden in the enamels of porcelain were dug up, the formation code of white porcelain as white as snow and warm as jade was interpreted, and the close relationship between its color effect and raw material iron content and treatment technology was revealed. From ancient panning, chemical bleaching processes to microbial iron removal, the integration of science and ingenuity gives the millennium white porcelain a new life in the chemical code, highlighting the organic integration of chemistry and the inheritance of excellent traditional culture.

As an important direction of education reform, the connotation of interdisciplinary practice has evolved from multidisciplinary integration to deep interdisciplinary integration, emphasizing that students use multidisciplinary knowledge to solve problems in real situations, so as to cultivate core literacy and the ability to solve complex problems. Its teaching value is reflected in knowledge integration, ability improvement, social interaction and metacognition deepening. However, current interdisciplinary practice activities still face challenges in system design, resource optimization, teacher literacy and evaluation mechanism. Therefore, strategies such as strengthening the combination of “top+bottom” design, optimizing practice resources and learning environment, improving teachers’ interdisciplinary literacy and improving evaluation and feedback mechanism are proposed to promote the effective implementation of interdisciplinary practice activities and provide theoretical and practical support for the cultivation of innovative talents.

Scientific experiments are a core component of natural science education and play an irreplaceable role in stimulating students’ curiosity, cultivating innovative thinking and practical abilities. However, the current evaluation mechanism for experimental teaching is not yet perfect, and there is a lack of systematic standards for evaluating students’ experimental abilities. The scientific experimental ability of middle school students is the most important and fundamental ability in scientific experiments at the secondary school stage. By clarifying the concept and connotation of middle school students’ scientific experimental ability, demonstrating the constituent elements of scientific experimental ability, and constructing a structural model of scientific experimental ability, the aim is to provide theoretical support and practical guidance for experimental teaching and its effectiveness evaluation, and to provide direction for the quantitative evaluation of experimental teaching.

Taking question 38 from 2025 Lianyungang senior high school entrance examination (chemistry) as an example, this paper focuses on the core literacy of “scientific inquiry and practice”. It systematically analyzes the approach to designing competency-oriented test questions from aspects such as assessment requirements, contextual materials, problem tasks, presentation methods, and scoring rubrics. The analysis highlights distinctive features including a steadfast focus on competencies, a problem-oriented approach, and an emphasis on assessing abilities. Furthermore, the paper reflects on and discusses dimensions such as strengthening the educational role of experimental inquiry, enhancing students’ key competencies, and innovating question design strategies.

Taking the handmade soap specific “potassium” as an example, under the overall task of “obtaining pure potassium hydroxide”, this paper designed sub tasks of “preparation, inspection, content determination, separation and impurity removal”, followed the problem clues of “how to think, how to do, why think and do this way”, applied the “basic thinking model” of understanding substances and changes, and used systematic exploration to closely link the perspectives of understanding, pointing to “thinking methods, evidence reasoning, model optimization”, promoting the structuring of knowledge, understanding, and concepts. Based on the performance of disciplinary abilities and pre-and post tests, through thematic review, the scientific exploration ability has been enhanced, and a “systematic thinking model” has been iteratively constructed to connect knowledge to literacy.

This study designs a competency-based independent unit teaching review using “Daxi” as a situational context. It establishes logical connections between the properties, composition, changes, and methods of preparation of substances, thereby promoting the development of disciplinary concepts and learning a multi-perspective understanding of the properties and changes of substances. The study reflects on the practical implementation from the perspectives of creating authentic contexts to promote knowledge and competencies, and highlighting the formation of concepts to develop core disciplinary competencies. This provides a reference for junior high school chemistry teachers to implement unit teaching design and promote the development of core competencies.

This paper adopts the teaching organization form of social practice activities to carry out the theme teaching of “talking about ethylene on the road to revitalization”. Through social practice activities to visit and summarize the industrial production process of ethylene, this article explains the selection of raw materials, control of reaction conditions, and recycling of energy in ethylene industrial production from the perspective of engineering thinking, and conducts in-depth learning on the industrial production of ethylene. By researching the achievements and development directions of China’s ethylene industry, this article aims to cultivate students’ patriotism and sense of mission in the era. The section on “how to recycle ethylene products” aims to cultivate students’ awareness of environmental protection and social responsibility.

This study constructs a teaching framework based on Socio-Scientific Issues (SSI), centering on the controversial case of “DDT’s abolition and retention” to integrate core knowledge of halogenated hydrocarbons, including physical properties, substitution and elimination reactions. Through problem-driven inquiry, experimental exploration, and scientific debates, students’ chemical core competencies are developed, such as “macro-micro analysis” “scientific ethics and social responsibility”, et al. The teaching emphasizes tripartite representational thinking, utilizes comparative experiments to reveal the regulatory role of reaction conditions, and guides students to dialectically evaluate the dual impacts of scientific advancements from a green chemistry perspective, achieving the integration of knowledge construction and value cultivation.

Based on social cognitive career theory and using the “water quality inspectors” as a case, the study establishes four stages: initial acquaintance with water quality inspectors, hands-on participation in water quality inspection, re-improvement of chemical vocational ability, and career linkage for water quality inspectors. These stages collectively guide students to engage in testing the ammonia nitrogen content in domestic drinking water, establish preliminary vocational concepts, enhance career self-efficacy, and promote career planning. This research provides insights for integrating career education into high school chemistry classrooms.

International science education emphasizes the teaching that integrates content knowledge, procedural knowledge, and epistemological knowledge. This study develops the “Classroom Observation Scale for the Teaching Status of Three Types of Knowledge” and adopts classroom observation and case analysis methods for investigation and analysis. The study finds that: senior high school chemistry teaching is dominated by content knowledge, followed by procedural knowledge, with epistemological knowledge accounting for the lowest proportion; the level of student subjectivity in the teaching of the three types of knowledge is generally low.

This study carries out cross-disciplinary practice activities in junior high school chemistry based on the concepts of STEAM education and design thinking. It designs and manufactures a “simple oxygen concentrator controlled by blood oxygen index” to address the issue of the insufficient integration of existing oxygen concentrators with real-life scenarios and cultivate students’ comprehensive practical abilities. Guided by the nighttime oxygen inhalation needs of special groups (such as the elderly and pregnant women), the practice constructs a “monitoring-regulation” closed-loop system. The device adopts a modular design, consisting of four major modules: data monitoring, oxygen generation, data transmission, and automatic control. It can intelligently start and stop oxygen supply according to preset blood oxygen thresholds and visually display historical data on a web page. The production process integrates 3D printing, programming, and hardware connection to achieve automatic control and one-click operation. In teaching, knowledge from multiple disciplines such as chemistry, physics, information technology, and engineering is integrated to guide students through the complete process of “needs analysis-prototype production-testing and optimization”, strengthening their cross-disciplinary thinking and system design capabilities.

Using iron-fortified soy sauce as the subject of study, two qualitative methods for testing iron are developed based on the properties of FeNaEDTA and soy sauce: the potassium ferricyanide method and the potassium thiocyanate method. This study proposes that the chromatographic effect of white chalk can be used to further optimize these two testing methods via simplifying procedures. These testing methods are characterized by simple operation and distinct phenomena, making them applicable to both classroom teaching and extracurricular exploration, which is conducive to promoting students’ in-depth learning.

In this paper, a series of visualized micro experiments based on a macro lens were designed as an example of the double hydrolysis reaction between sodium bicarbonate, sodium carbonate, and aluminum sulfate. The results show that the difference in dissolution rates between the two sodium salts can be clearly observed under the macro lens, and the physical state of the reactants significantly affects their hydrolysis reactions. The “solid-solid” reaction is more suitable for observing the dissolution behavior of the two sodium salts and the dynamic process of their double hydrolysis reaction; the “solid-liquid” reaction is more intense, making it easier to compare and reflect that the hydrolysis reaction of sodium bicarbonate is faster than that of sodium carbonate; the “liquid-liquid” reaction produces a more homogeneous precipitate. In all three types of reactions, the formation of precipitate followed by gas evolution can be observed during the double hydrolysis of sodium carbonate, whereas sodium bicarbonate produces precipitate and gas simultaneously. The improved experiment is characterized by visualization, miniaturization, and strong comparability.

Students investigate whether potassium thiocyanate solution can be used to test for the presence of trivalent iron ions in the “copper corrosion solution”, using the white precipitate generated in the reaction system after adding potassium thiocyanate solution to the corrosion liquid as the research object. They conduct a thorough and systematic analysis based on microparticles, exploring the source, composition, formation rate, and reaction process of the white precipitate.

By using available household chemicals and comparing droplet adhesion to a coin, mechanisms of inter-molecular forces and its influencing factors are visualized through dynamic phenomena. With eco-friendly materials and observable results, the micro-experiments enable student-led exploration. By integrating theoretical knowledge with everyday materials, such experiments not only cultivate the core chemical literacy of “macroscopic identification and microscopic analysis”, but also highlight the essence of the chemistry discipline in experimental teaching.

The main components of silicate glass test tubes are Na₂SiO₃, CaSiO₃ and SiO₂. Among them, Na₂SiO₃ aqueous solution is alkaline and theoretically can turn phenolphthalein solution red. When adding phenolphthalein solution dropwise in a silicate glass test tube, the phenolphthalein solution did not show any color change; Immerse the cleaned glass fragments in phenolphthalein solution, and no significant color change was observed; After grinding the glass fragments into powder, add phenolphthalein solution dropwise, and the solution immediately turned red. This phenomenon indicated that the release of alkaline substances in glass was closely related to the physical form of the glass, and the powder state was more conducive to the color reaction between alkaline components and phenolphthalein.

This study innovatively designed a two-liquid primary battery to physically isolate NO^-₂ and NO₂ produced during the reaction between copper and concentrated nitric acid, systematically investigating the regulatory effect of NO^-₂ on the reaction rate. Experimental results demonstrated that the copper nitrite complex formed by NO^-₂ and Cu²⁺ significantly reduced Cu²⁺ concentration and enhanced the reducibility of copper, thereby accelerating the reaction. Kinetic analysis further elucidated the mechanism behind the abrupt color change of the solution from green to blue during the reaction, confirming the catalytic role of NO^-₂. This research not only deepens the understanding of the copper-nitric acid reaction mechanism, but also provides a practical inquiry-based case for high school chemistry experimental teaching, highlighting the regulatory function of coordination compound in redox reactions.

The climate crisis has become a global challenge in the 21st century. Chemistry education, as a crucial bridge between scientific understanding and climate action, urgently needs to be integrated into the “Action for Climate Empowerment” (ACE) framework. This article, based on 24 articles from 2025 virtual special issue of American Chemical Society Journal of Chemical Education, combines international policies and practical cases to systematically analyze the value orientation and practical approaches of climate empowerment in chemistry education. The study reveals that climate empowerment in chemistry education provides an educational paradigm for global sustainable development. China can draw on international experiences by integrating policies, developing localized curricula, and establishing multi-party collaborative mechanisms to enhance the climate governance function of chemistry education.

This paper statistically analyzes the proportion of structural chemistry in the theoretical problems of past International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO) competitions, summarizes the structural chemistry knowledge points covered and their frequency of occurrence, and specifically examines the question design framework and assessment perspectives of IChO problems concerning structural chemistry. Based on the above analysis, the paper further elaborates on how to study structural chemistry in a targeted manner and provides detailed preparation suggestions.