Mobile phones are a widely used platform for educational apps, mobile health, and a variety of chemical tests. Here, we are working on a mobile phone-based physics lab (mPhysics) that uses a mobile phone's capabilities to run simple physics experiments and demonstrations. While a mobile phone can be used to analyze magnetic and optical properties…

Biodiesel is an important alternative fuel synthesized by the trans-esterification of vegetable oils, animal fats, and recycled greases. In this experiment, students prepared biodiesel through the base-catalyzed trans-esterification of several vegetable oils, which were subsequently analyzed in comparison with conventional petroleum-based fuels to…

Thermodynamic characterization of micelle formation from an ionic surfactant in aqueous solutions is a classic experiment in physical chemistry. The critical micelle concentration (CMC) and the degree of micelle ionization ([alpha)] can be directly obtained by conductimetry, then thermodynamic parameters ([delta]G[subscript m][superscript o],…

The free radical chlorination of an alkane experiment is often used in the undergraduate laboratory curriculum to introduce students to the free radical mechanism, substituent effects, intermediate stability, and the relative reactivity of radicals. In this experiment, students monochlorinate multiple alkanes and analyze the reaction mixture using…

Keto-enol tautomerism is a special example of structural isomerism. In this experiment, 6-chlorofulvene is predominantly yielded during the chlorination reaction of 6'-hydroxyfulvene with POCl[subscript 3] in the presence of DMF. The high regioselectivity of this reaction is dominated by intramolecular hydrogen-bonding and steric hindrance,…

In this brief experiment, students create a superhydrophobic surface as an application of polar--nonpolar interactions and redox chemistry. Half of a zincgalvanized steel strip is coated in copper nanoparticles through electroless deposition. A layer of nonpolar octadecanethiol is added to half of that copper surface. Students classify the three…

Experimental electrochemistry offers unique opportunities for interactive instruction at all levels of education; however, widespread adoption in curricula is hindered by high costs associated with electrochemical instrumentation. Thus, the development of affordable instruments represents an essential step toward making electrochemistry accessible…

A laboratory activity is described for senior high school or first year undergraduate level students that illustrates key concepts linked to extractive metallurgy. This experiment demonstrates preferential binding of a methoxyphenolic oxime ligand to Cu[superscript 2+] in the presence of other transition metal ions in aqueous solution. The…

This laboratory experiment allows one to study the effect of temperature in the process of formation of hydrogen bound cyclic dimers of benzoic acid (BA). The implementation of the proposed methodology, which comprises the use of FTIR spectroscopy and quantum chemistry calculations, enables the obtaining of the thermodynamic parameters of the…

This laboratory experiment showcases electroless deposition, an autocatalytic reduction process performed in aqueous solution containing a metal ion in the presence of a reducing agent yielding a coherent metal film. One set of experiments has been performed by second-semester general chemistry students in a 3 h lab session. After preparing an…

A laboratory experiment utilizing locally available Indian Gooseberry ("Phyllanthus emblica" Linn.) extract as a bioreagent to determine iron(III) is described with the goal of providing students with hands-on experience in spectrophotometry and green chemistry. Spectrophotometry was used to measure the concentration of the complex…

A laboratory experiment introducing the concept of chemical bioconjugation of proteins to undergraduate students in a therapeutically relevant context was developed. Initially, students installed an aldehyde functionality into a protein via the oxidation of the N-terminal threonine residue of the cholera toxin subunit B (CTB) protein, which was…

The dehydration of 2- or 4-methylcyclohexanol to obtain isomers of methylcyclohexene is a classic organic chemistry experiment. Students perform a distillation, collecting samples to analyze the progress of the reaction. The reaction produces a major product that can be explained on the basis of the regiochemistry of the [pi] bond formation for…

We describe an educational activity that can be done by using smartphones to collect data in physics experiments aimed to measure the oscillating period of a spring-mass system and the elastic constant of the helicoidal spring by the dynamic method. Results for the oscillating period and for the elastic constant of the spring agree very well with…

The Hofmeister series is a recurring trend that ranks ions' abilities to influence various aqueous processes in solution. Herein, a set of project-based experiments was developed for students in an upper-level physical chemistry laboratory to investigate the specific ion effects on the thermodynamics of caffeine partitioning between aqueous and…