Quality control (QC) measures are less prevalent in teaching laboratories than commercial settings possibly owing to a lack of commercial incentives or teaching resources. This article focuses on the use of QC assessment in the analytical techniques of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-vis) at…

An interdisciplinary, semester-long project is presented in which students grow Cucumis sativus (cucumber) plants from seeds and study the ability of the plants to remediate a heavy metal from contaminated soil or water or both. Phytoremediation strategies for environmental cleanup are presented as possible alternatives to chemical based clean-up…

In this paper, we describe two complementary nonlinear spectroscopy methods which both allow one to achieve Doppler-free spectra of atomic gases. First, saturated absorption spectroscopy is used to investigate the structure of the 5S[subscript 1/2] [right arrow] 5P[subscript 3/2] transition in rubidium. Using a slightly modified experimental…

Substantial modifications are presented for a previously described experiment using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to quantitatively determine analytes in commercial nail polish remover. The revised experiment is intended for a second- or third-year laboratory course in analytical chemistry and can be conducted for larger laboratory…

An open-ended laboratory practical has been developed that challenges students to evaluate when different purification techniques are appropriate. In contrast to most lab practicals, the overall grade includes an evaluation of spectral analysis as well as writing skills. However, a significant portion of the grade lies in successful execution of a…

This experiment was developed as a means of incorporating instrumental analyses into an introductory chemistry laboratory. A two-component solid mixture of caffeine and ibuprofen is separated through a series of solution extractions and precipitation and their relative amounts measured. These compounds were chosen because the combination of…

Treatment of phenylacetic acid with 90% HNO[subscript 3] yields a product, I, whose observed melting point is 175-179 degrees C and whose equivalent weight is approximately 226 grams. Treatment of phenylacetic acid with 70% HNO[subscript 3] yields a product, II, whose observed melting point is 106-111 degrees C and whose equivalent weight is…

Every day, tens of thousands of chemists use analytical atomic spectroscopy in their work, often without knowledge of possible interferences. We present a unique approach to study these interferences by using modern response surface methods to visualize an interference in which aluminum depresses the calcium atomic absorption signal. Calcium…

The iodochlorination of styrene, involving the addition of iodine monochloride to styrene, followed by the sodium methoxide-initiated dehydrohalogenation of the product results in a variable mixture of substituted styrenes by way of various substitution and elimination reaction mechanisms. As a result individual results are obtained for each…

The fundamental and overtone vibrational absorption spectroscopy of the C-H unit in CHCl[subscript 3] is measured for transitions from the v = 0 energy level to v = 1 through v = 5 energy levels. The energies of the transitions exhibit a linearly-decreasing spacing between adjacent vibrational levels as the vibrational quantum number increases.…

A two-week laboratory experiment for students in advanced inorganic chemistry is described. Students prepare and characterize a cobalt(III) complex coordinated by a thioether ligand during the first week of the experiment and then study the kinetics of Co-S bond cleavage in basic solution during the second week. The synthetic portion of the…

Ruby is a crystalline material, which comes very expensive and is of great significance, as it helped in the creation of first laser. An experiment to determine the absorption and emission spectroscopy, in addition to the determination of the room-temperature lifetime of the substance is being described.

A biophysical-chemistry experiment, based on the reflectance spectroscopy for calculating the absorption and scattering coefficients of leaves is described. The results show that different plants species exhibit different values for both the coefficients because of their different pigment composition.

Few laboratory procedures describe the use of circular dichroism (CD) at the undergraduate level. To increase the number of laboratory exercises using CD, a thermal denaturation study of myoglobin using CD is described to assess protein stability. Values obtained from a more classic linear data analysis approach are consistent with data analyzed…

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…