This work addresses and aims to fulfill a very clear need in teaching biosystem engineering. When introducing students to the complexity of soil processes, one of the frustrations that teachers often experience is the impossibility to demonstrate practically, in the lab, some of the concepts and processes discussed in class. Either the experiments…

An undergraduate laboratory experiment is described to measure Henry's law constants of organic compounds using a bubble column and gas chromatography flame ionization detector (GC-FID). This experiment is designed for upper-division undergraduate laboratory courses and can be implemented in conjunction with physical chemistry, analytical…

Fugacity and bioavailability can be used to facilitate students' understanding of potential environmental risks associated with toxic chemicals and, therefore, should be incorporated in environmental chemistry and science laboratories. Although the concept of concentration is easy to grasp, fugacity and bioavailability can be challenging…

This three-week advanced-level organic experiment provides students with an inquiry-based approach focused on learning traditional skills such as primary literature interpretation, reaction design, flash column chromatography, and NMR analysis. Additionally, students address higher-order concepts such as the origin of azulene's blue color,…

This article proposes an indirect method to evaluate the corrosion rate of iron nail in simulated seawater. The official procedure is based on the direct measurement of the specimen's weight loss over time; however, a highly precise scale is required and such equipment may not be easily available. On the other hand, mobile phones equipped with…

An applied computational chemistry laboratory exercise is described in which students use modern quantum chemical calculations of chemical shifts to assign the structure of a recently isolated natural product. A pre/post assessment was used to measure student learning gains and verify that students demonstrated proficiency of key learning…

This undergraduate physical chemistry laboratory exercise introduces students to the study of probability distributions both experimentally and using computer simulations. Students perform the classic coin toss experiment individually and then pool all of their data together to study the effect of experimental sample size on the binomial…

Global interest in both renewable energies and reduction in emission levels has placed increasing attention on hydrogen-based fuel cells that avoid harm to the environment by releasing only water as a byproduct. Therefore, there is a critical need for education and workforce development in clean energy technologies. A new undergraduate laboratory…

The food industry uses different additives to give foods and beverages the appearance expected by the consumer. Among them, pigments of natural origin are receiving increasing attention due to safety concerns about traditional colorants and the relevance of a healthy diet. This experiment describes the quantitative determination of the…

A laboratory experiment for students in advanced inorganic chemistry is described. Students prepare palladium(II) cyclometalated complexes. A terdentate [C,N,O] Schiff base ligand is doubly deprotonated upon reaction with palladium(II) acetate in a self-assembly process to give a palladacycle with a characteristic tetranuclear structure. This…

We present a laboratory experiment for advanced undergraduate or graduate laser-related classes to study the performance of a neodymium laser. In the experiment, the student has to build the neodymium laser using an open cavity. After that, the cavity losses are modulated with an optical chopper located inside, so the Q-switching regime is…

An interesting, quick, and inexpensive lab that we do with our students is to tape one end of a string just less than halfway around the back side of a uniform solid cylinder m[subscript 1] and attach the other end of the string to a mass m[subscript 2] that is below a pulley (Fig. 1). Data can be collected using either an Ultra Pulley (Fig. 2) or…

This paper describes a mini-project developed with 10th grade Portuguese students where, by using an experimental activity involving the use of natural dyes to colour wool, students acquired a better understanding of the concepts and relationship between the colour, the electromagnetic spectrum, and chemical bonding. As demonstrated by the results…

A general chemistry laboratory experiment using readily available chemicals is described to introduce college students to an exciting class of nanocomposite materials. In a one-step room temperature synthetic process, magnetite nanoparticles are embedded onto activated carbon matrix. The resultant nanocomposite has been shown to combine the…

This laboratory exercise introduces undergraduate chemistry majors to the spectroscopic and theoretical study of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), corannulene. Students explore the spectroscopic properties of corannulene using UV-vis and Raman vibrational spectroscopies. They compare their experimental results to simulated vibrational…