Cosmetic chemistry is a prevalent part of everyday life, but there are very few undergraduate laboratories that explore this topic. Here, we present a laboratory exercise in which students use fizzing bath tablets (better known as "bath bombs") to learn about introductory kinetics. Students created their own bath bombs by combining…

The redox reaction between dioxovanadium(V) and oxalate is proposed as a suitable system to analyze the kinetics of a twostep reaction mechanism using UV-vis spectroscopy. First, the spectra of dioxovanadium(V) and its reduced counterpart oxovanadium(IV) are compared and explained using the crystal field theory. The change in absorbance can be…

This lesson focuses specifically on teaching concepts of speed and its impact on energy, as well as providing a basic introduction to potential and kinetic energy to fourth-grade students. "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") 4-PS3-1 states that students should be able "to use evidence to construct an explanation…

A laboratory experiment that exposes students to fundamental concepts in kinetics and statistical thermodynamics to study systems of great current interest in nanotechnology by employing a foundational technique in physical chemistry is described. A modified commercial flash photolysis spectrometer was used to study photoinduced isomerization…

The Gaussian gun is an arrangement of magnets and ball bearings (pictured in Fig. 1) such that--when the leftmost ball is released--the rightmost ball is ejected at high speeds. The device has been described in several articles on energy education. The sudden appearance of kinetic energy offers a productive context for considering a range of…

A five day activity that involves the construction and characterization of a small car whose motion is controlled by the vitamin C clock reaction is presented. The purpose of the activity is to engage first-year Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) students not majoring in the chemical sciences. Throughout the activity students…

In this laboratory experiment, students explore the aquatic photochemical fate of ranitidine and cimetidine, two common pharmaceutical pollutants found in wastewater. It provides an engaging environmental context for students to develop knowledge of reaction kinetics and photochemistry as well as skill in using analytical instrumentation. This…

A physical chemistry lab for undergraduate students described in this report is about applying kinetic models to analyze the spread of COVID-19 in the United States and obtain the reproduction numbers. The susceptible-infectious-recovery (SIR) model and the SIR-vaccinated (SIRV) model are explained to the students and are used to analyze the…

Quantitative demonstration of chemical kinetics often requires sophisticated equipment and materials. By using inexpensive and commonly available chemicals, we propose here two clock reactions, oxygen-safranin-benzoin clock and cysteine-iodine-hydrogen peroxide clock. Students simply measure and add stock solutions to start clock reactions. Sudden…

Work, kinetic energy (KE), and potential energy (PE) are key physics concepts, taught in essentially every introductory physics course along with the physical laws such as the work-kinetic energy theorem and the conservation of mechanical energy, which describe how the values of those quantities change during various processes. Quite appropriately…

A laboratory experiment is described in which students carry out immobilization of the enzyme invertase via entrapment in alginate (Ca-alginate) and, accordingly, estimate values for kinetic constants and mass transfer coefficients. Immobilization of enzymes, or confinement thereof to a defined space with retention of most catalytic activity, is…

This article describes a straightforward approach to deliver an enzyme assay and kinetics laboratory via online delivery methods in the time of COVID-19.

We present an algorithm for solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation that is based on the finite-difference expression of the kinetic energy operator. Students who have some knowledge of linear algebra can understand the theory used to derive the algorithm. This is because the finite-difference kinetic energy matrix and the Hückel matrix…

The principles of chemical kinetics comprise one of the core topics that appear throughout chemistry. Standard kinetics lessons typically cover reaction rates and relative rates, rate laws, integrated rate laws, half-lives, collision theory, and the Arrhenius equation. They can also introduce a discussion of mechanisms as well, which may be the…

What if "every breath you take, every move you make" (Sting 1983) could be harnessed to produce renewable energy? Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) are state-of-the-art devices researchers are studying to do just that--convert kinetic energy into electrical energy at the source (Saurabh Rathore 2018). This type of electrical energy is…