The relationship between surface area and dynamics of processes can be demonstrated by adding iron at room temperature to liquid nitrogen. The rate at which the liquid nitrogen boils to produce gas is related to the surface area of the iron. Adding iron in the form of consistent units that have measurable sizes can be readily connected to…

Chemical kinetics is a branch of physical chemistry that constitutes an essential part of undergraduate education. In general, a complex and expensive experimental apparatus is indispensable for observing the kinetics of a chemical process owing to the continuity of chemical reactions. Thus, intuitive visualization of the chemical kinetics using a…

Nonlinear chemical reactions produce interesting chemohydrodynamic patterns in an unstirred medium, which act as interesting demonstrations to display the novel phenomena in a nonequilibrium chemical system. Here, we report new outreach experiments: pH chemohydrodynamic patterns modulated by sodium polyacrylate in the bromate-sulfite-ferrocyanide…

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…

An inexpensive enzyme kinetics laboratory exercise for undergraduate biochemistry students is described utilizing tyrosinase from white button mushrooms. The exercise can be completed in one or two three-hour lab sessions. The optimal amounts of enzyme, substrate (catechol), and inhibitor (kojic acid) are first determined, and then kinetic data is…

First-order kinetic decay rates can be obtained by measuring the time-dependent reflection spectra of ultraviolet-sensitive objects as they returned from their excited, colored state back to the ground, colorless state. In this paper, a procedure is described which provides an innovative and unique twist on standard, undergraduate, kinetics…

This is the start of a road map for the effective introduction of inquiry-based learning in chemistry. Advantages of inquiry-based approaches to the development of scientific literacy are widely discussed in the literature. However, unless chemistry educators take account of teachers' reservations and identified disadvantages such approaches will…

To familiarize first-year students with the important ingredients of a physics experiment, we offer them a project close to their daily life: measuring the effect of air resistance on a bicycle. Experiments are done with a bicycle freewheeling on a downhill slope. The data are compared with equations of motions corresponding to different models…

Experiments are described on collisions between two billiard balls and between a bat and a ball. The experiments are designed to extend a student's understanding of collision events and could be used either as a classroom demonstration or for a student project.

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…

A simple organic chemistry experiment is described that investigates the kinetics of the reaction between 1-bromobutane (BuBr) and iodide (I[superscript -]) as followed by observing the disappearance of BuBr and the appearance of 1-iodobutane (BuI) using [superscript 1]H NMR spectroscopy. In small groups of three to four, students acquire data to…

Newton's second law is one of the cornerstones of the introductory physics curriculum, but it can still trouble a large number of students well after its introduction, hobbling their ability to apply the concept to problem solving and to related concepts, such as momentum, circular motion, and orbits. While there are several possibilities for…

The traditional introductory-level meterstick-balancing lab assumes that students already know what torque is and that they readily identify it as a physical quantity of interest. We propose a modified version of this activity in which students qualitatively and quantitatively measure the amount of force required to keep the meterstick level. The…

The familiar system involving a uniform ladder sliding against a vertical wall and a horizontal floor is considered again. The floor is taken to be smooth and the wall to be possibly rough--a situation where no matter how large the static friction coefficient between the ladder and the wall, the ladder cannot lean at rest and must slide down.…

Stopped-flow kinetics techniques are important to the study of rapid chemical and biochemical reactions. Incorporation of a stopped-flow kinetics experiment into the physical chemistry laboratory curriculum would therefore be an instructive addition. However, the usual reactions studied in such exercises employ a corrosive reagent that can over…