We describe an intensive course that integrates graduate and continuing education focused on the development and scale-up of chromatography processes used for the recovery and purification of proteins with special emphasis on biotherapeutics. The course includes lectures, laboratories, teamwork, and a design exercise and offers a complete view of…

Starting the school year in an introductory high school chemistry class can be a challenge. The topic and approach is new to the students; many of the early chapters in the texts can be a bit tedious; and for many students the activities are uninspiring. My goal in the first few weeks of school is to hook the students on chemistry by getting them…

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 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.)

This article provides an example of a teacher's learning, since the author only became aware of the microscale technique described very late in his professional career. The technique provides a convenient method of preparing and manipulating gases on a very small scale and a relatively safe means of demonstrating reactions that would be very…

Reduced costs and greater time efficiency are often quoted among the main benefits of microscale chemistry. Do these benefits outweigh some of the limitations and difficulties faced in terms of students needing to develop new manipulation skills, and teachers requiring training in terms of implementation and management? This article describes a…

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…

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…

Avogadro's number, usually denoted by N[subscript A], plays a fundamental role in both physics and chemistry. It defines the extremely useful concept of the mole, which is the base unit of the amount of matter in the international system of units. The fundamental character of this number can also be illustrated by its appearance in the definitions…

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…

Techniques are presented for improving the technical writing of chemical engineering students enrolled in an undergraduate laboratory course. The principles of writing covered are adopted from the book, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, by Joseph M. Williams: General examples of writing are taken from this book and then are recast into examples…