The question from the title is raised because in almost all introductory physics courses/textbooks the atmospheric pressure has been attributed to the weight of the column of air from a given level in the atmosphere up to its top. "Air is pressing on air." However the same textbooks, in the chapter on the kinetic theory of gases, tell…

Recently, researchers have paid extensive attention to colorimetric/fluorimetric probe development and its applications in biological and industrial samples. The actual development of such probe molecules, however, often requires an iterative process to achieve certain goals such as selectivity and sensitivity toward a target analyte. In spite of…

Here we present a new undergraduate laboratory that will introduce the concepts of time-resolved spectroscopy and provide insight into the natural time scales on which chemical dynamics occur through direct measurement. A quantitative treatment of the acquired data will provide a deeper understanding of the role of quantum mechanics and various…

Artificial photosynthesis (AP) is a synthetic chemical process that replicates natural photosynthesis to mass produce hydrogen as a clean fuel from sunlight-driven water splitting (2H[subscript 2]O [right arrow] O[subscript 2] + H[subscript 2]). In both natural and artificial photosynthesis, an oxygen-evolving catalyst (OEC) is needed to catalyze…

An open-source electrochemistry simulation package has been developed that simulates the electrode processes of four reaction mechanisms and two typical electroanalysis techniques: cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry. Unlike other open-source simulation software, this package balances the features with ease of learning and implementation and…

This work describes a 10-week laboratory project studying wild-type and mutant bacterial alkaline phosphatase, in which students purify, quantitate, and perform kinetic assays on wild-type and selected mutants of the enzyme. Students also perform plasmid DNA purification, digestion, and gel analysis. In addition to simply learning important…

Carrying out classroom experiments that demonstrate Boyle's law and Gay-Lussac's law can be challenging. Even if we are able to conduct classroom experiments using pressure gauges and syringes, the results of these experiments do little to illuminate the kinetic theory of gases. However, molecular dynamics simulations that run on computers allow…

In this exercise, an actual chemical reaction, oxidation of iron in air, is studied along with a related analogue simulation of that reaction. The rusting of steel wool is carried out as a class effort. The parallel simulation is performed by students working in small groups. The analogue for the reacting gas is a countable set of discrete marble…

Enzyme kinetics measurements are a standard component of undergraduate biochemistry laboratories. The combination of serine hydrolases and fluorogenic enzyme substrates provides a rapid, sensitive, and general method for measuring enzyme kinetics in an undergraduate biochemistry laboratory. In this method, the kinetic activity of multiple protein…

A demonstration of the degradation of food coloring dyes by oxidation via the Fenton reaction can be substituted with a simpler demonstration using the oxidant oxone with iron(II) ions as an activator. The addition of small amounts of solid oxone and iron(II) sulfate to solutions containing mixtures of food coloring results in successive…

The Billotron is a device designed and built by the LPC Caen to illustrate the methods with which physicists are able to study the basic structure of matter, in particular the nucleus of the atom.

A traditional organic chemistry laboratory experiment involves the acid-catalyzed isomerization of (-)-menthone to (+)-isomenthone. This experiment generates large quantities of organic and aqueous waste, and only allows the final ratio of isomers to be determined. A "green" modification has been developed that replaces the mineral acid…

Measuring the heat capacity ratios, [gamma], of gases either through adiabatic expansion or sound velocity is a well established physical chemistry experiment. The most accurate experiments depend on an exact determination of sound origin, which necessitates the use of lasers or a wave generator, where time zero is based on an electrical trigger.…

Elementary, middle-level, and high school science teachers commonly find their students have misconceptions about heat and temperature. Unfortunately, student misconceptions are difficult to modify or change and can prevent students from learning the accurate scientific explanation. In order to improve our students' understanding of heat and…

A laboratory experiment for undergraduate students who are studying homogeneous and heterogeneous electron-transfer reactions is described. Heterogeneous or electrode reaction kinetics can be examined by using the electrochemical reduction of three Fe[superscript III]/Fe[superscript II] redox couples at platinum and glassy carbon disk electrodes.…