Bioplastics in the General Chemistry Laboratory: Building a Semester-Long Research Experience

We report here a second semester general chemistry laboratory project themed around chitosan-alginate bioplastics. With increasing awareness of plastic pollution in the environment and the awareness of the importance for materials which are either made from renewable resources or are biodegradable, this topic provides a relevant opportunity to engage students. The semester-long laboratory experience has students working in teams first to complete a series of core experiments which provide a foundational experience in preparing and testing chitosan-alginate bioplastics prior to developing and implementing a project in a direction of their own choosing. The benefit of these student directed research projects can include enhanced engagement and can allow development of skills such as experiment design, data collection and analysis, written and oral dissemination, and critical thinking. We describe here both the core module in bioplastics which has the potential to be incorporated as a self-contained module by interested parties along with the way in which this is expanded to incorporate the student directed projects.