Approximations can help to orient the student in an organic chemistry laboratory. There the student needs to develop the solvent systems for the reaction and isolation of organic reactants and products. The adage "like dissolves like" helps in this regard, but this approach is vague and entirely qualitative. More quantitative approaches…

Electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions are common in the organic chemistry laboratory. These reactions, while ubiquitous, use corrosive reagents and halogenated or hydrophobic solvents that produce expensive and hazardous waste streams. The carboxylation of phenols (Kolbe-Schmitt reaction), although aqueous, typically involves conditions…

Protein molecular weight standards are routinely employed in sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) to estimate the apparent sizes of unknown proteins within a sample. For training students, a laboratory course based on the production of marker proteins is proposed. Following fractionation by column chromatography, a…

An understanding of basic organic chemical reactivity is key for many biosciences students. The reactivities of different carbonyl groups affect their function in many biomolecules. A practical class, the two-step synthesis of paracetamol, has been devised to illustrate the electrophilic reactivities of carbonyls, which was covered in the…

An operationally simple, reliable synthesis of ethynylated acenes suitable for an upper-division undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory course has been developed. This experiment requires students to synthesize two acene derivatives and can be completed in 6-8 laboratory sessions (3 h each); a shorter experiment could be realized in the…

Health-related career goals are popular among high school science students, yet few understand the application of chemistry and biology research to the field of medicine and its impact on society. In this five-day multidisciplinary summer camp, high school students learn about the real-world relevance of medicinal chemistry research and its…

Surface chemistry impacts technology, advancing the development of new heterogeneous catalysts, semiconductor devices, and materials synthesis. Carbon surfaces are ubiquitous in various fields, and the surface reactivity can be altered by surface functionalization on the molecular scale, introducing functional groups, thus shifting their…

Nanotechnology has been recognized as an important driver of the future economy, and so nanoscience is increasingly being incorporated into the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. This experiment includes the chemical synthesis, optical and chemical testing, and microscopic imaging of gold nanoparticles. Since nanoparticles are too small to…

Is the reductionist approach to teaching chemical principles in the laboratory adequate for students to make effective evaluations? In this work, using the example of sunscreens, students first assessed the analytical chemistry parameters of the active ingredients, later comparing and contrasting them with organic chemistry information for…

Curriculum-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have been shown to increase student retention in STEM fields and are starting to become more widely adopted in chemistry curricula. Here we describe a 10-week CURE that is suitable for a second-semester organic chemistry laboratory course. Students synthesize small molecules and use…

Given the importance of self-healing polymers for chemistry education, herein, we introduce our latest research results in self-healing materials based on thioctic acid into undergraduate chemistry laboratory. In this experiment, a natural small molecule, thioctic acid (TA), and a few other commercially-available reagents have been used to make a…

The prompt introduction of single-molecule science into undergraduates' curricula is an urgent but challenging task. However, the research experiments are often too complicated and the instruments are too expensive to be widely transferred into a compulsory course of undergraduate students. Herein, we introduce a recently developed nanopore…

Due to the wide and the ever-increasing strategic applications of quantum chemistry in chemical industries, it is important to introduce chemical engineering students to illustrative case studies that deploy molecular modeling in the design of reactors and derivation of thermochemical functions. Herein, we demonstrate how quantum chemical…

Thomas Graham discovered the law that bears his name while studying gas diffusion into air and other gases. He also found that the same relationship held with gas effusion, the movement of gases through a pinhole into a vacuum. Modern understanding of diffusion and effusion is based on kinetic-molecular theory, and it is generally accepted that…

In response to the call for an increased emphasis from the American Chemical Society on including macromolecular studies in the undergraduate curriculum, a supramolecular-themed experiment was designed for undergraduate-level organic laboratory courses that provides a convenient platform to study physical behaviors of supramolecular assemblies.…