A comprehensive undergraduate experiment about extraction, separation, and identification of essential oils (EOs) from a natural plant is described. "Acori tatarinowii" Rhizoma (ATR) was used as the raw plant material. Two devices (Soxhlet and Clevenger) with different extraction principles were employed for EO extraction from ATR,…

The effects of kinetic vs thermodynamic control on "endo"/"exo" stereoisomer ratios can be observed in a simple Diels-Alder reaction between "N"-phenylmaleimide and furan. The use of microwave-promoted synthesis affords the cycloadducts in yields ranging from 65-100%, employing reaction times of 1-10 min at…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] We present the pedagogical design and implementation of "ESSENCe": Experimental problem solving using Staging, Scaffolding, Embedded information sources, iNstruments, and Collaboration. Research in experimental physics requires…

Hydrogen is a sustainable and climate-friendly storage for renewable energies and can directly be generated from sunlight, e.g., by photocatalytic water splitting. This article presents the photocatalytic hydrogen evolution using LED irradiation of an aqueous ZnS particle dispersion with Na[subscript 2]S and Na[subscript 2]SO[subscript 3] as…

Molecular photochemistry is an integral field in chemistry. Despite this, it is often difficult to demonstrate an effective hands-on experiment that offers a unique opportunity to students to observe photochemistry in action. Although simple laboratory experiments which use a UV-vis wavelength lamp do provide some photochemical information, the…

Watching over a coffee maker in operation, and designing a simple experiment using it, invokes familiar and unfamiliar physical phenomena and techniques involving calorimetry and heat transfer.

Rising cases of COVID-19 caused St. John's University to transition to an online educational model in the spring 2020 semester. As a result, an in-person Cooperative Learning advanced general chemistry laboratory course was transitioned into an online/remote Cooperative Learning experience. Cooperative Learning in the general chemistry laboratory…

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is an indispensable technique in the organic chemistry laboratory for elucidation of molecular structure. Miniaturization of NMR technology has attracted attention and acceptance due to a considerable reduction in the cost to acquire and maintain the instrument. The advent of low-field, low-cost, and…

To prove that oxygen is irreversibly consumed in the blue bottle reaction, a manometer or a plastic bottle was used to show a permanent reduction in the gas pressure in a reaction vessel. This demonstration may be misleading because the change in gas pressure can be attributed to a number of other factors such as temperature change and involvement…

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…

Genetics is known to be one of the most challenging subjects in biology education because of its abstract concepts and processes. Therefore, hands-on experiments in authentic learning environments are supposed to increase comprehensibility and provide otherwise unavailable experiences to students. We applied a hands-on module in an out-of-school…

Infrared (IR), or radiation, thermometers are widely used in temperature measurements in many different sectors from health, food, automotive, agriculture, iron and steel to chemistry due to their fast measurement capabilities, reasonable prices, wide measurement ranges and ease of use. IR thermometers work based on black body radiation. In this…

Interdisciplinary experiments within chemistry are very important for the improvements in the overall quality of the education received by students. In this work, we describe an interdisciplinary experiment that was successfully completed by undergraduate students. This training integrates multiple disciplines including natural product medicinal…

Polymer chemistry is an important subject in the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. It is required for ACS-certified degrees and significantly connects to real world issues like the plastic waste crisis. While some concepts of polymer chemistry can be incorporated into lecture courses, students' understanding of material properties and…

A laboratory experiment for the determination of the cross-linking density of silicone elastomers is described on the basis of swelling experiments and mechanical tests. In the experiment, the macroscopic swelling and mechanical behaviors of the elastomers were discussed as a function of the cross-linking density, which can be easily controlled by…