El propósito de este trabajo es presentar algunos aspectos relevantes de la formación basada en competencias para la formación de nivel profesional. Los países latinoamericanos deben estar preparados para tal efecto, para ello los docentes de la región deben comprender los principios bajo los cuales se está gestando este nuevo modelo centrado en competencias, rompiendo paradigmas y beneficiando con ello la construcción del propio conocimiento por parte del estudiante, que le permitirá no sólo resolver ejercicios tipo, sino tener competencias (conocimientos, habilidades, actitudes y valores) para cualquier momento en el cual se tenga que enfrentar a la solución de situaciones reales.

Coffee grounds are an organic waste consisting of the ground, roasted and processed grain for the extraction of coffee, being of great volume the waste obtained, which, if not treated and preserved for a long time, emanates unpleasant aromas and becomes an optimal means for the proliferation of flies, and other pests. Activated carbon has the characteristic of being a material that has a large surface area; because of this, it is used in adsorption, which refers to the retention of atoms, ions, and molecules on its surface. In this paper, the production of activated carbon is presented by means of the physicochemical activation of coffee waste by calcining at 900 °C and subsequent activation with sulfuric acid, as well as the Box–Behnken design of three factors for chromium (III) adsorption optimization. It is determined that the optimal conditions for performing the adsorption are pH = 3 and a contact time of 140 min. According to the analysis of variance for the experimental design, it is determined that the initial chromium formation is not significant for the adsorption process. Under the optimal adsorb conditions of 96%, an application is given to the erasure of coffee for the production of activated carbon, which serves as the adsorbent agent applied to the removal of chromium (III) aqueous. The area of activated carbon obtained is 13657.89 ± 251.09 m²/g determined by the acetic acid adsorption isotherm method.

Tonsil Actisil FF, which is a commercial bentonitic clay, promotes the formation of cycloveratrylene macrocycles and benzyl oligomers from the corresponding benzyl alcohols in good yields under microwave heating and infrared irradiation in the absence of solvent in both cases. The catalytic reaction is sensitive to the type of substituent on the aromatic ring. Thus, when benzyl alcohol was substituted with a methylenedioxy, two methoxy or three methoxy groups, a cyclooligomerisation process was induced. Unsubstituted, methyl and methoxy benzyl alcohols yielded linear oligomers. In addition, computational chemistry calculations were performed to establish a validated mechanistic pathway to explain the growth of the obtained linear oligomers.

In the teaching of Chemistry, in the Upper Middle Level, it has been found that, during the process of teaching and learning the inorganic chemical nomenclature, students tend to memorize the contents and do not acquire significant learning. In this paper, a proposal for game-based learning about the chemical nomenclature of binary salts is made. The playful material developed consisted of using as a base the Rubik’s cube, in its standard version, to which stickers were placed with the symbolic representation of various binary salts, as well as the names in traditional nomenclature, Stock and IUPAC. This didactic tool was called the RUBIQUIM cube. The tool was used in three groups of the upper secondary level, where the students solved the RUBIQUIM cube. To determine the impact of the playful material, a questionnaire was applied with questions from N1 to N3, according to Bloom’s taxonomy, and the Hake index was determined. The groups in which game-based learning was applied showed better academic performance and greater cognitive learning than the control group. The Hake index of 0.56, in the N2 and N3 questions, indicates the effectiveness of interactive learning.

Tonsil Actisil FF, a commercial bentonitic clay, promotes the formation of a series of electrophilic-aromatic-substitution products from para-methoxybenzyl acetate in carbon disulfide. The molecules obtained correspond to linear isomeric dimers, trimers, tetramers and a pentamer, according to their spectroscopic data. A clear indication of the title mechanistic pathway for the oligomerization growth was obtained from the analysis of a set of computational-chemistry calculations using the density-functional-theory level B3LYP/6-311++G(d,p). The corresponding conclusions were based on the computed dipole moments, the HOMO/LUMO distributions, and a natural-populations analysis of the studied molecules.