Chemistry undergraduate curricula typically place Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) lectures under either Organic Chemistry or Spectroscopy courses, aiming for students to acquire basic knowledge for the determination of the structure of simple organic compounds. On the other hand, regarding laboratory practice, NMR is frequently disregarded by…

We present the design of a periscope-type VIS spectrometer for educational purposes that combines strong features from various earlier designs and adds new ones. Three 3D-printed pieces that hold a small thin mirror sheet, a 1/8th wedge of a DVD, and two razor blades are easily assembled and facilitate insight into its construction. A new feature…

Students in a typical instrumental analysis course may learn more than 30 analytical techniques. There are more than 150 components associated with the instrumentation that they learn. To help students organize this large amount of information, we classified these components into four categories: sources, samples, discriminators, and detectors. In…

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…

Few laboratory exercises exist that introduce undergraduate students to both the concepts and instrumentation used in rotational spectroscopy. Because of this gap in undergraduate laboratory training, a teaching laboratory for the pure rotational spectroscopy of benzonitrile has been developed and reported. Owing to benzonitrile's recent discovery…

In this guided-inquiry lesson, students were tasked with determining the efficacy of an at-home drinking water filter at removing lead (Pb) from tap water using graphite furnace atomic absorption spectroscopy by determining the concentration of lead before and after filtration. The lesson was structured to allow students to choose and perform…

A laboratory experiment has been developed to illustrate the transformation of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) in water containing phosphate anions. The experiment, conducted by high school students, involved hands-on learning to synthesize and characterize Ag NPs via ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) spectroscopy. This was followed by a UV-vis probe of…

NMR is a fundamental part of any undergraduate chemistry degree, and training students how to measure and interpret NMR spectra is essential for postgraduate research or chemistry-based careers. Traditionally, the undergraduate laboratory experience with NMR is restricted to sample submission for NMR analysis, which is typically conducted by a…

Hands-on learning in a laboratory is an integral part of the undergraduate experience for chemistry students. However, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, an opportunity for this approach was not possible. The pandemic has been forcing instructors to explore the remote setting instead of the laboratory. There are several commercially…

Earth's field nuclear magnetic resonance (EFNMR) spectroscopy offers students a unique opportunity to consolidate their understanding of NMR spectroscopic theory through hands-on practice with a simple spectrometer. A comprehensive, 6 h experiment is presented for the introduction of low-field NMR techniques, covering spectroscopy, relaxivity, and…

This work describes the design, building, and testing of miniature, low-cost LED-LDR colorimeters for absorption-spectrophotometry experiments. It also describes using these colorimeters for simplified context-based-learning (CBL) activities in school teaching laboratories and for public-engagement events. The colorimeters are simple and robust,…

Here, students determine aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) mass in pharmaceutical tablets using a colorimetric method. Aspirin, salicylate, and salicylic acid do not absorb visible light. Thus, in alkaline medium, acetylsalicylic acid was hydrolyzed to salicylate; then, it was reacted with an acidic Fe(III) solution, and a violet complex was formed.…

Pigments, dyes, and transition-metal compounds are made in courses across the undergraduate chemistry curriculum, but student characterization of these compounds' most striking features, their colors, seldom goes beyond verbal descriptions. Affordable, hand-held, fiber-optic reflectance spectrophotometers make it possible to advance students'…

This manuscript describes a laboratory experiment that provides students with an opportunity to create conductive silver nanogrids using polymeric templates. A microcontact-printed polyvinylpyrrolidone grid directs the citrate-induced reduction of silver ions for the fabrication of silver nanogrids on glass substrates. In addition to…

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…