This laboratory experiment provides undergraduate students enrolled in organic chemistry the opportunity to design and synthesize their own peptide, which is then tested for antimicrobial activity. After reading a primary scientific paper on antimicrobial peptides, students design and synthesize their own hexapeptide that they hypothesize will…

Light and spectroscopy are among the most important and frequently taught topics in introductory college-level general education astronomy courses (hereafter Astro 101). This is due to the fact that the vast majority of observational data studied by astronomers arrives at Earth in the form of light. While there are many processes by which matter…

Presented is a project-based learning (PBL) laboratory approach for an upper-division environmental chemistry or quantitative analysis course. In this work, a combined laboratory class of 11 environmental chemistry students developed a method based on published EPA methods for the extraction of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and its…

A highly instructive, wide-ranging laboratory project in which students study the effects of various parameters on the enzymatic activity of alcohol dehydrogenase has been adapted for the upper-division biochemistry and physical biochemistry laboratory. Our two main goals were to provide enhanced data analysis, featuring nonlinear regression, and…

Use of advanced mass spectrometry techniques in the undergraduate setting has burgeoned in the past decade. However, relatively few undergraduate experiments examine the proteomics tools of protein digestion, peptide accurate mass determination, and database searching, also known as peptide mass fingerprinting. In this experiment, biochemistry…

A multistep synthesis of thieno[2,3-"b"]pyridine derivatives is described that is suitable for the upper-level undergraduate organic laboratory. This experiment exposes students to various hands-on experimental techniques as well as methods of product characterization such as IR and [superscript 1]H NMR spectroscopy, and…

The binding constant and stoichiometry ratio for the formation of iron(II)-(1,10-phenanthroline) or iron(II)-o-phenanthroline complexes has been determined by a combination of a low-cost analytical method using a smartphone and a molecular modeling method as a laboratory experiment designed for analytical and physical chemistry courses. Intensity…

Hydrogen bonds are very important chemical structures that are responsible for many unique and important properties of solvents, such as the solvation power of water. These distinctive features are directly related to the stabilization energy conferred by hydrogen bonds to the solvent. Thus, the characterization of hydrogen bond energetics has…

[Superscript 1]H NMR analysis is an important analytical technique presented in introductory organic chemistry courses. NMR instrument access is limited for undergraduate organic chemistry students due to the size of the instrument, price of NMR solvents, and the maintenance level required for instrument upkeep. The University of Georgia Chemistry…

In this article, I propose a student-centred approach to teaching quantum chemistry and spectroscopy at the bachelor-level that extends active learning principles outside course lectures. The aim is to elucidate what type of methodology is most appropriate and efficient for this context and student population, and how this incorporation of active…

The Characterization and Analysis of a Product (CAP) project is used to introduce first-semester general chemistry students to chemical instrumentation through the analysis of caffeine-containing beverage products. Some examples of these products have included coffee, tea, and energy drinks. Students perform at least three instrumental experiments…

Although nuclear half-life is vital to physics and physical science, and to sensitive societal issues from nuclear waste to the age of the Earth, a true lab on half-life is almost never done at the college or high school level. Seldom are students able to use radioactivity to actually date when an object came into being, as is done in this…

A simple and economical experimental setup is described that enables multiple individuals or groups within a laboratory class to measure the thermal melting of double stranded DNA simultaneously. The setup utilizes a basic spectrophotometer capable of measuring absorbance at 260 nm, UV plastic cuvettes, and a stirring hot plate. Students measure…

The antibacterial chemical triclosan is a common component in personal care products but recently the subject of many reports concerning environmental toxicity and health impacts. Although triclosan concentration in a soap can be determined simply via high-performance liquid chromatography, this is a technique not routinely available in the…

The laboratory unit demonstrates a project based approach to teaching physical chemistry laboratory where upper-division undergraduates carry out a transient-absorption experiment investigating the kinetics of cis-trans isomerization of N,N-dimethyl-4,4'-azodianiline. Students participate in modification of a standard flash-photolysis spectrometer…