A class of 18 students attending the last year of an Italian high school was divided into groups and performed the extraction of pigments contained in hibiscus tea. Each group worked at a different temperature and carried out multiple extractions using distilled water as a solvent. By means of UV-vis spectroscopy it was possible to determine the…

The ability of students to perform quantitative analysis is a fundamental aspect of analytical chemistry courses and laboratories. In this laboratory experiment, students quantitatively analyze both liquid and solid samples through the use of internal standard calibration and ATR-FTIR spectroscopy. Using a problem-based approach to selecting their…

Mass spectrometers are ever-increasingly powerful, user-friendly, and affordable. Thus, the addition of mass spectrometry experiments into the undergraduate laboratory curriculum is now both feasible and an effective tool to introduce students to relevant instrumentation. Here an experiment demonstrating the use of a high-resolution electrospray…

This experiment describes a simple protocol for teaching acid-base titrations using potentiometry, conductivity, and/or photometry to determine end points without an added indicator. The chosen example examines the titratable acidity of a red wine with NaOH. Wines contain anthocyanins, the colors of which change with pH. Importantly, at the…

This experiment was designed and successfully introduced to complement the nanochemistry taught to undergraduate students in a useful and interesting way. Colloidal Ag nanoparticles were synthesized by a simple, room-temperature method, and the resulting suspension was then used to study the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) of methylene…

In this experiment, students build a spectrometer to explore infrared radiation and greenhouse gases in an inquiry-based investigation to introduce climate science in a general chemistry lab course. The lab is based on the exploration of the thermal effects of molecular absorption of infrared radiation by greenhouse and non-greenhouse gases. A…

Stoichiometry has always been a puzzling subject. This may be partially due to the way it is introduced to students, with stoichiometric coefficients usually provided in the reaction. If the stoichiometric coefficients are not given, students find it very difficult to solve problems. This article describes a simple 4-h laboratory experiment for…

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) studies of art represent an attractive way to introduce undergraduate students to concepts in nanoscience, vibrational spectroscopy, and instrumental analysis. Here, we present an undergraduate analytical or physical chemistry laboratory wherein a combination of normal Raman and SERS spectroscopy is used to…