Undergraduate physics laboratory exercises are very important in shaping students' attitude to science, especially for future teachers. Recently, it is necessary to look for ways to easily create large quantities of experimental sets, not only for institutional use, but also for sets that can be produced in large quantities and distributed for use…

The aldol condensation reaction is one of the many synthesis reactions carried out in second semester organic chemistry laboratories. This reaction was integrated into a novel experiment requiring students to synthesize dibenzalace tone derivatives using the crossed-aldol condensation by reacting different types of benzaldehyde derivatives with…

This laboratory experiment introduces upper-division undergraduate analytical chemistry students to liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) in a forensic application: the analysis of cocaine and metabolites of cocaine in simulated serum ostensibly from drug overdose victims. For this investigation, students developed the…

To understand critical problems associated with solid waste and its consequences for the environment, a laboratory experiment is presented on the synthesis of aluminum-based metal-organic framework (MOF) MIL-53(Al) from household waste (PET bottles and aluminum foil/can), for undergraduate students of chemistry. This work is designed to teach…

In selecting from a repertoire of traditional kinetics experiments, an instructor often has to choose among having students gain experience with the graphical method, the method of initial rates, or a temperature-dependent experiment in which students construct an Arrhenius plot. This paper presents an environmentally friendly bleaching reaction…

The lifetimes of the photoluminescent compounds contained in the coating of fluorescent compact lamps are usually measured using specialised instruments, including pulsed lasers and/or spectrofluorometers. Here we discuss how some low cost apparatuses, based on the use of either sensors for the educational lab or commercial digital photo cameras,…

The activity of mushroom tyrosinase can be measured by monitoring the conversion of phenolic compounds into quinone derivatives using spectrophotometry. This article describes a series of experiments which characterize the functional properties of tyrosinase, the analysis of the resulting data using R to determine the kinetic parameters, and the…

Unlike most spectroscopic calibrations that are based on the study of well-separated features ascribable to the different components, this laboratory experience is especially designed to exploit spectral features that are nearly overlapping. The investigated system consists of a binary mixture of two commonly occurring minerals, calcite and…

The synthesis of N-methoxycarbonyl-2-imidazolidone, an analogue of biotin, was conducted by organic chemistry students and confirmed using FT-IR and H NMR. Spectroscopy students used FT-IR to measure the rate of hydrolysis of the product and determined the rate constant for the reaction using the integrated rate law. From the magnitude of the rate…

The FluAnisot educational software package is a fully contained tutorial on the technique of fluorescence anisotropy measurement as well as a simulator on which two experiments can be performed. The procedure for each of the experiments is also contained within the package along with example analyses of results that were obtained using the…

In this experiment, students are given a fanciful application of the standard addition method to evaluate the approximate quantity of the shell component in a sample of sand collected on the Lido di Venezia seashore. Several diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform (DRIFT) spectra are recorded from a sand sample before and after addition of…

Simple measurements of the decay time of cathodoluminescence are described. Cathodoluminescence is used in many devices, including computer monitors, oscilloscopes, radar displays and television tubes. The experimental setup is simple and easy to build. Two oscilloscopes, a function generator, and a fast photodiode are needed for the experiments.…

A force spectroscopy model experiment is presented using a low-cost tensile apparatus described earlier. Force-extension measurements of twisted rubber bands are obtained. They exhibit a complex nonlinear elastic behaviour that resembles atomic force spectroscopy investigations of molecules of titin, a muscle protein. The model experiments open up…

An experiment is described, which is designed for a junior-level chemical engineering "fundamentals of measurements and data analysis" course, where students are introduced to the concept of statistical process control (SPC) through a simple inline mixing experiment. The students learn how to create and analyze control charts in an effort to…

Discusses the use of laser spectroscopy in determining the presence of specific gaseous constituents. Three of currently used modes for laser detection of pollution are reviewed; (1) long-path measurements; (2) laser raman (differential absorption) measurements; and (3) optoacoustic detection. (HM)