It is well known that the needle of a compass in a magnetic field deflects, and that a compass near a conductive wire carrying a stable electric current deflects its needle. The only explanation of this observation is that the current-carrying wire creates a magnetic field around it. The strength of the magnetic field at any point near the wire…

Ion transport, involving the diffusion and migration of ions within the electrolyte, stands as a fundamental concept in electrochemistry and serves as the driving force for electrochemical reactions. Electric double layers are critical in the fields of electrochemical energy storage and chemical conversion, constituting a central focus of…

Inspired by a commercially produced scattering experiment that was popular beginning in the 1960s, we have developed a Nerf-projectile-based educational activity to demonstrate the basics of particle scattering experiments.

High school students and students in the first years of college have difficulties in understanding the topic of stoichiometry and, in particular, the concept of limiting reactant. Proposals aimed at overcoming these learning obstacles tend to focus on analogies, and there are few sequences that approach teaching from an experimental perspective.…

After a time away from the classrooms and laboratories due to the global pandemic, the return to teaching activities during the semester represented a challenge to both teachers and students. Our particular situation in a Microbial Physiology course was the necessity of imparting in shorter time, laboratory practices that usually take longer. This…

The activity proposed in this study aims to investigate the equilibrium between the liquid and vapor phases in a mixture of water and acetic acid, both of which are volatile substances. High school students can easily determine the composition of the liquid phase and its corresponding vapor phase at equilibrium using a simple and conceptually…

Reported herein is a chemistry experiment integrating polymer chemistry and instrumental analysis for the juniors majoring in chemistry. This experiment has a different scheduling framework than traditional experiments with a fixed lab period and schedule. The students arrange their experiment flexibly and individually. Styrene maleic anhydride…

In this paper, we utilize the readily known theory of the ideal transformer to furnish a self-contained qualitative explanation on the AC-powered Thomson jumping ring (TJR) experiment.

The "Golden Penny" demonstration is a popular experiment that involves treating copper coins with chemical reagents to form brass, an alloy of copper and zinc that has a golden color. Reported here is a very simple modification for forming golden color on copper coins that does not require the use of chemical reagents. Instead, golden…

Photochemical reactions are initiated by the absorption of light, triggering the chemical reactions and resulting in the formation of products. These reactions are generally performed using a freely available renewable source of energy-solar energy. Solar simulators mimic both the ultraviolet and visible regions of sunlight and hence can serve as…

We investigated a very long chain falling from the pile on the edge of a table to the floor both experimentally and theoretically. In this very simple and novel configuration we showed that the velocity of the chain quickly converges to its asymptotic value, and that the steady-state velocity is proportional to the square root of the height of the…

Our first experience of dimension typically comes in the intuitive Euclidean sense: a line is one dimensional, a plane is two dimensional, and a volume is three dimensional. However, following the work of Mandelbrot, systems with a fractional dimension, "fractals," now play an important role in science. The novelty of encountering…

In this paper, a simple method is described for visually demonstrating that the wavelength of light reduces when entering a medium of higher refractive index. When a violet laser (405 nm) is reflected off the surface of a Blu-ray disc (track spacing 320 nm) diffraction cannot occur since the wavelength is greater than the track spacing. However,…

Applying the idea of green chemistry, we extended an esterification teaching experiment with isoamyl alcohol and acetic acid and reused isoamyl acetate in the transesterification reaction with KOH as the catalyst. As a result, isoamyl alcohol was produced and could be reused for the teaching experiment. The simplified experimental method achieved…

Short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) are produced in the gut as a result of microbial action on ingested dietary fiber and have been associated with several health benefits. Herein an undergraduate student experiment that uses gas chromatography equipped with either a flame ionization detector or mass spectrometer for the analysis and quantitation of…