Microplastics have been detected in most ecosystems around the world. They affect the environment and organisms in it, including humans and possibly their health. Hence, the analysis of microplastic occurrence in the environment is highly relevant. However, there are only a few practical and easy-to-implement methods published for school use, and…

The undergraduates in the major of Environmental Science and Environmental Engineering frequently ignored the importance of identifying pollution sources for water environment monitoring and knew little about the techniques of identifying pollution sources. Thus, a laboratory experiment which focused on pollution sources identification in a water…

Understanding the controls of the oxidation rate of iron (Fe) in oxygenated aquatic systems is fundamental for students of the Earth and Environmental Sciences as it defines the bioavailability of Fe, a trace metal essential for life. The laboratory experiment presented here was successfully developed and used during a third-year undergraduate lab…

In this paper, we report an experiment intended as a tool to introduce chemistry and materials science students to several chemical concepts through the determination of the best experimental conditions for the formation of calcium oxide (lime) from a source of high content of calcium carbonate (eggshells). Thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA),…

A green chemistry experiment is presented for teaching an undergraduate quantitative analysis/analytical chemistry laboratory class through the use of black tea leaf extract for the determination of iron in supplement tablets. Dried tea leaf is a safe, low cost, and widely available source of natural extract that can be used in place of more toxic…

Natural products are ubiquitous in nature but do not form a large proportion of the A-level syllabuses in the UK. In this article we briefly discuss a small selection of natural products, focusing on alcohols, aldehydes and ketones, and alkaloids. We then outline two natural product experiments that are suitable for A-level chemistry clubs or…

This paper reports an experimental activity where students have to carefully analyze the evidence collected at the crime scene, namely fibers and lipstick traces. The fibers are analyzed by infrared spectroscopy, solubility tests, and optical microscopy, while in turn the lipstick traces are investigated by thin layer chromatography. Students also…

Students learned the principles and practice of photometry through project-based learning. They addressed the challenge of measuring the unknown concentration of a colored substance using a photometer they were required to design, build, and test. Then, they used that instrument to carry out the experiment and fulfill the challenge. A photometer…

Circular dichroism (CD) has emerged as one of the standard biophysical techniques for the study of guaninequadruplex (G4) folding, cation effect, and ligand binding. The utility of this technique is based on its robustness, ease of use, and requirement of only small quantities of nucleic acid. This experiment is also extendable to the classroom…

The Australian Curriculum: Science for Year 5 includes "recognising that the colour of an object depends on the properties of the object and the color of the light source". This article shows how much more can be done with color in the science laboratory. Activities include using a prism to explore white light, using a hand lens to…

Routinely used in quantitative determination of various analytes, UV-vis spectroscopy is commonly taught in undergraduate chemistry laboratory courses. Because the technique measures the absorbance of light through the samples, losses from reflection and scattering by large molecules interfere with the measurement. To emphasize the importance of…

Although environmental radioactivity is all around us, the collective public imagination often associates a negative feeling to this natural phenomenon. To increase the familiarity with this phenomenon we have designed, implemented, and tested an interdisciplinary educational activity for pre-collegiate students in which nuclear engineering and…

Interdisciplinary experiments are being offered in upper-division chemistry laboratory courses in an attempt to encourage students to make a connection between techniques learned in one discipline to affirm chemical principles that form the basis of chemical reactions in another chemistry discipline. A new interdisciplinary experiment is described…

This paper discusses laboratory activities that can improve the meaningfulness of natural product chemistry course. These laboratory activities can be useful for students from many different disciplines including chemistry, pharmacy, and medicine. Students at the third-year undergraduate level of chemistry education undertake the project to…

This study proposes a home-assembled, low-cost blue light-emitting diode (LED) photometer that uses simple and low-cost hardware and software, costing about US $150. This 425-nm wavelength photometer is controlled by an 89C51 microcontroller chip. Glucose concentration detection experiments involving enzyme coupling reactions were carried out to…