Nanoscience, or the study of the world at the size of a billionth of a meter, has the potential to help students see how all of the sciences are related. Behavior of materials at the nanoscale differs from materials at the macroscale. This article introduces three nanoscale properties and how they relate to various science domains. Three…

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…

One of the most commonly used ingredients in over-the-counter acne treatments in cream, gel, and wash form is benzoyl peroxide. It is an anti-bacterial agent that kills the bacterium ("Propionibacterium acne") involved in the formation of acne. The formulation of these products is extremely difficult owing to the instability of benzoyl peroxide.…

Who has never played with soap bubbles? They are so beautiful and amazing, they have a perfect spherical shape and surprising tints. Foams are structures of bubbles of an incredible complexity and they are a perfect system to stimulate students' interest in the chemistry and physics of surface phenomena. In this article I propose a simple…

Most processes (whether physical, chemical, or biological) produce or consume heat: measuring thermal power (the heat production rate) is therefore a typical method of studying processes. Here we describe the design of a simple isothermal heat conduction calorimeter built for use in teaching; we also provide an example of its use in simultaneously…

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…

Waste newspaper is pulped with acid and its cellulose is hydrolyzed. The resulting glucose syrup is fermented with yeast and distilled to give ethanol. The experiment highlights the potential of applied chemistry to confront problems of economic importance, that is, the effective utilization of biomass to reduce dependence on non-renewable…

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…

A simple procedure for determining the zinc composition of U.S. pennies is described. The penny zinc core is dissolved in acid and the evolved hydrogen gas is collected by water displacement.

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…

It is not common to introduce current astronomy in school lessons. This article presents a set of experiments about gravitational lenses. It is normal to simulate them by means of computers, but it is very simple to simulate similar effects using a drinking glass full of liquid or using only the glass base. These are, of course, cheap and easy…

An educational set-up for cosmic ray physics experiments is described. The detector is based on scintillator tiles with a readout through metal resistor semiconductor (MRS) avalanche photo diode (APD) arrays. Typical measurements of the cosmic angular distribution at sea level and a study of the East-West asymmetry obtained by such a device are…

Not so long ago a new observation about rolling motion was described: for a rolling wheel, there is a set of points with instantaneous velocities directed at or away from the centre of the wheel; these points form a circle whose diameter connects the centre of the wheel to the wheel's point of contact with the ground (Sharma 1996 "Eur. J. Phys."…

We describe a simple and very inexpensive undergraduate laboratory experiment for fast determination of Young's modulus at moderate temperatures with the aid of a force sensor. A strip-shaped specimen rigidly bolted to the force sensor forms a clamped-free cantilever beam. Placed in a furnace, it is subjected to free-bending vibrations followed by…