The American Chemical Society advocates a shift from rule-based to risk-based safety education for chemistry graduates, emphasizing meaningful student engagement in the risk assessment process for laboratory work. To implement this paradigm shift, we introduced RAMP (Recognize Hazards, Assess Risk, Minimize Risk, and Prevent Emergencies)-based…

This paper outlines a comprehensive teaching laboratory course program that centers on titration analysis, a timeless and essential technique in analytical chemistry spanning various disciplines, such as environmental science, medicine, and industry. In these fields, titration analysis is paramount for determining the concentrations of substances…

Undergraduate research experience is critical to success in postgraduate research settings. The recent movement away from "cookbook" style laboratories to course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) in undergraduate laboratories has allowed universities to provide inclusive research experience while bypassing the limitations…

This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of an inquiry-based laboratory for sophomore-level organic chemistry into a mostly cookbook, existing laboratory curriculum. For the laboratory, students were required to generate their own procedures and use their own recorded data from prior laboratory assignments to identify an…

Raman spectroscopy is an important vibrational spectroscopy tool to characterize chemical compounds. As only a few photons undergo Raman scattering, enhancement of signal is a vital requirement. In this laboratory experiment, some practical aspects of Raman spectroscopy and how a simple enhancement procedure can be used to detect a Raman signal…

We present the use of an oxygen tolerant controlled radical polymerization (photoinduced electron/energy transfer-reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer polymerization, PET-RAFT) as a simple method for preparing controlled radical polymers in an undergraduate laboratory. Unlike conventional techniques, PET-RAFT polymerizations require no…

Dendrite growth affects material systems across applications as diverse as lithium batteries, organic light emitting diodes, turbine blades, and biological sensors. Their unique crystal structure and ability to physically see growth make for a unique undergraduate laboratory experience. This experiment uses dendrite growth to explore the physical…

Introductory lab courses have been a staple of the physics curriculum for over 100 years. Yet these courses are now poised for change as recent research shows that they do not meet a frequent goal of enhancing student understanding of lecture content. In thinking about how to move forward, a look back at experiment courses in history seems wise.…

Nowadays, novel Biochemistry lab techniques are being introduced at a very fast pace in scientific research. This requires development of new labs for undergraduate Biochemistry courses to equip the students with up-to-date techniques. However, the time limit of Biochemistry labs for undergraduate students represents a major obstacle. This article…

The pendulum was an important scientific instrument in the 17th century. It became a typical textbook problem in the 18th century. After the introduction of vectors in physics in the 1890s, the pendulum problem started to be progressively solved in the manner we know nowadays from introductory mechanics courses. Starting from "F = ma"…

In general, undergraduate experimental physics laboratories do not usually have experiments designed to address rolling friction and to measure the value of the rolling friction coefficient. This work explores an experiment, which has the potential to arouse students' curiosity about rolling friction by addressing a counterintuitive aspect of the…

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has become a cornerstone tool for studying a variety of molecular features in advanced chemistry laboratories. In this experiment, students prepare a pyrrole-[beta]-amide via a one-pot, three-step synthesis and use NMR spectroscopy to confirm its molecular structure. In addition, variable temperature…

Single-outcome experiments are used in the undergraduate instructional laboratory, particularly for large lectures associated with multiple sections of instructional laboratories, due in large part to efficiencies associated with chemical purchases, experiment preparations, and assessments. Despite the practical advantages, single-outcome…

Much of analytical chemistry involves the analysis of complex mixtures, where careful attention to sample preparation and method selectivity is required to avoid interferents and obtain accurate data. As this type of analysis is very different from simple colorimetric analysis that most students are exposed to in general chemistry, this laboratory…

An experiment was developed for a first year food chemistry laboratory course that demonstrates the influence of several aspects of polysacharide structure on the rate of amylase catalyzed hydrolysis. The experiment would be particularly well-suited to a first year chemistry course that was targeted at nonchemistry majors, such as health related…