The field of extrasolar planets is still, in comparison with other astrophysical topics, in its infancy. There have been about 300 or so extrasolar planets detected and their detection has been accomplished by various different techniques. Here we present a simple laboratory experiment to show how planets are detected using the transit technique.…

The internal ballistics of a firearm or artillery piece considers the pellet, bullet, or shell motion while it is still inside the barrel. In general, deriving the muzzle speed of a gunpowder firearm from first principles is difficult because powder combustion is fast and it very rapidly raises the temperature of gas (generated by gunpowder…

This work explores the concept of dissipative work and shows that such a kind of work is an invariant non-negative quantity. This feature is then used to get a new insight into adiabatic irreversible processes; for instance, why the final temperature in any adiabatic irreversible process is always higher than that attained in a reversible process…

The use of silver in commercial products has proliferated in recent years owing to its antibacterial properties. Food containers impregnated with micro-sized silver promise long food life, but there is some concern because silver can leach out of the plastic and into the stored food. This laboratory experiment gives students the opportunity to…

An experimental procedure, using an apparatus that is easy to construct, was developed to incorporate a quantitative electrogravimetric determination of the solution nickel content into an undergraduate or advanced high school quantitative analysis laboratory. This procedure produces results comparable to the procedure used for the gravimetric…

An experiment has been developed in which the hydrogen-atom abstraction and the coupling of propionitrile, using Fenton's reagent, are investigated. Students learn about the regiochemistry of radical formation, the stereochemistry of product formation, and the interpretation of GC-MS data, in a safe reaction that can be easily completed in one…

This technology report alerts upper-division undergraduate chemistry faculty and lecturers to the use of Texas Instruments emulators as virtual graphing calculators. These may be used in multimedia lectures to instruct students on the use of their graphing calculators to obtain solutions to complex chemical problems. (Contains 1 figure.)

A five-session laboratory project was designed to familiarize or increase the laboratory proficiency of biology students and others with techniques and instruments commonly used in molecular biology research laboratories and industries. In this project, the EZ-Tn5 transposon is used to generate and screen a large number of cells transformed with…

This laboratory exercise is an inquiry-based investigation developed around the core experiment where students, working alone or in groups, each purify and analyze their own prescreened colored proteins using immobilized metal affinity chromatography (IMAC). Here, we present reagents and protocols that allow 12 different proteins to be purified in…

For some students, organic chemistry can be a distant subject and unrelated to any courses they have seen in their college careers. To develop a more contextual learning experience in organic chemistry, an additional text, "Napoleon's Buttons: 17 Molecules That Changed History," by Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson, was incorporated as a…

Students explore the fundamental chemical concepts of vapor pressure and flash point in a real-world technical context, while gaining insight into the contemporary societal issue of biofuels. Lab activities were developed using a closed-cup instrument to measure the flash point of various biodiesel samples. Pre- and post-tests revealed that the…

A low-cost biochemistry experiment is described that demonstrates current techniques in the use of catalytic DNA molecules and introduces a nonradioactive, nonfluorescent, inexpensive, fast, and safe method for monitoring these nucleic acid reactions. The laboratory involves the exploration of the 10-23 DNA enzyme as it cleaves a specific RNA…

Reactive oxygen species such as singlet oxygen have been a major focus of research in medicine. The effect of singlet oxygen on sterols within biological membranes is becoming increasingly more important. Ergosterol, a vitamin D precursor, is one such sterol. The benzoylation of ergosterol and subsequent reaction with singlet oxygen to form an…

The understanding of electronic structure of atomic and molecular term states involved in spectroscopic transitions is aided by projecting combinations of micro-configurations to multi-electron states with "good" quantum numbers of angular momenta. In rare-earth (RE) compounds, atomic term labels are justifiably carried over to compounds, because…

The enzymatic resolution of "rac"-1-phenylethanol using ethyl myristate as acylating agent and solvent and "Candida antarctica" lipase B (CAL-B) as biocatalyst was demonstrated with catalyst and medium reuse. Both enantiomers of 1-phenylethanol were isolated by sequential enzymatic reactions and product distillations. From the first enzymatic…