Demonstration Extension: Copper-to-Silver-to-Gold Penny Demonstration
This demonstration, if done in the original way, can lead to fires in waste containers (sometimes in the middle of the night after the experiment has been conducted), because pyrophoric zinc is...

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Thin-Layer Fuel Cell for Teaching and Classroom Demonstrations
A thin-layer fuel cell is described that is simple and easy to set up and is particularly useful for teaching and classroom demonstrations. The cell is both an electrolyzer and a fuel cell and...

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Illustrating the Concept of Sparingly Soluble Salts Using Various Copper Compounds
Many students in general and advanced chemistry courses have difficulty understanding differences in solubility by inspecting changing values of the solubility product constants for sparingly soluble...

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Fog Machines, Vapors, and Phase Diagrams
A series of demonstrations is described that elucidate the operation of commercial fog machines by using common laboratory equipment and supplies. The formation of fogs, or "mixing clouds", is...

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Molecular Models of Components in Red Bull Energy Drinks
Our featured molecules for this month come from the paper by André J. Simpson, Azadeh Shirzadi, Timothy E. Burrow, Andrew P. Dicks, Brent Lefebvre, and Tricia Corrin (1). In the article, the authors...

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Molecular Models of Volatile Organic Compounds
This month’s Featured Molecules come from the Report from Other Journals column, Nature: Our Atmosphere in the Year of Planet Earth, and the summary found there of the paper by Lelieveld et...

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Molecular Models of Compounds in Lightsticks
The article “Glowmatography”, by Thomas S. Kuntzleman, Anna E. Comfort, and Bruce W. Baldwin, is the source of this month’s Featured Molecules (1). Three molecules from the paper have been...

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Molecular Models of Peroxides and Albendazoles
This month our featured molecules come from two sources, the paper by Marina Canepa Kittredge, Kevin W. Kittredge, Melissa S. Sokol, Arlyne M. Sarquis, and Laura M. Sennet on the stability of benzoyl...

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Molecular Models of Natural Products
This month’s issue of the Journal includes several papers discussing interesting molecules that fall into the broad category of natural products, and four of these papers serve as the source for...

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Molecular Models of Polymers Used in Sports Equipment
In keeping with the 2008 National Chemistry Week theme of “Having a Ball with Chemistry”, the Featured Molecules this month are a number of monomers and their associated polymers taken from a...

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Molecular Models of EDTA and Other Chelating Agents
Deirdre Bell-Oudry presents a variation on an old theme in her paper on using an indirect EDTA titration for sulfate analysis (1). EDTA and (often loosely) related species are this month’s Featured...

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A Dramatic Classroom Demonstration of Limiting Reagent Using the Vinegar and Sodium Hydrogen Carbonate Reaction
This demonstration is designed to illustrate the concept of limiting reagent in a spectacular way. Via a series of experiments where the amount of vinegar is fixed and the amount of NaHCO₃...

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New Observations on the Copper-to-Silver-to-Gold Demonstration
The demonstration in which a copper penny is converted first to "silver" and then to "gold" involves, as the first step, the deposition of zinc onto copper in hot NaOH solution. The reaction involves...

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Bordwell pKa Values in DMSO
The late F. Bordwell of Northwestern University measured the pKa values of thousands of organic compounds. This Web site makes some of the data he measured conveniently available to the chemical...

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Physical Organic Terms
International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry documents describing the nomenclature of physical organic compounds.

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