A laboratory experiment for science courses: Sedimentary microbial fuel cells.

Nowadays there is a concern to improve the quality of education by including an interdisciplinary approach of concepts and their integration in the curriculum of scientific disciplines. The development of microbial fuel cells as a potential alternative for production of renewable energies gives undergraduate students the challenge of integrating interdisciplinary concepts in a hot topic of global interest as alternative energies. We present a laboratory experiment that has been part of a third-year undergraduate course in biology where students gained experience in assembling microbial fuel cells and the understanding of how they work.