“It was a dark and stormy night...”: The Use of a Crime Story to Apply (Not Only) Introductory NMR Spectroscopy

Here, the game-based final session of a short course aiming to introduce high school students to NMR spectroscopy is proposed. The intention was to provide a game fiction in the form of a crime story, encouraging students to work in teams, in order to make STEM disciplines more straightforward and playful. The activity consists of 4-6 h of introductory lessons in NMR spectroscopy to help students understand how to interpret the spectra of simple molecules. After that, the crime investigation takes 2 h, and the story is given to the students little by little in the form of a fictional newspaper text. The chain of events, the clues, and methods used during the scientific investigation will reveal the identity of the culprit. The story can be modified by the instructor to be used to introduce the students to other analytical techniques. All materials to run the active final session, including original data and electronic presentations, are available as Supporting Information.