general public

One of my favorite chemistry demonstrations is the “Copper to Silver to Gold” experiment¹ (VIDEO 1), in which a penny is first plated with zinc and then heated to form brass, an alloy of copper and zinc. The heat causes zinc to diffuse into the copper in the penny. The zinc plate imparts a beautiful silver color to the penny.

The oxidation of reducing sugars by silver ions to form a silver mirror is a classic chemistry experiment. In this experiment, sugars that contain aldehyde functional groups are reacted with an ammonia-silver complex to form silver metal, which forms a shiny metallic mirror:

Bottles of soda are sealed under high pressures of CO₂, or P_CO2. This causes a substantial amount of CO₂ to dissolve into the beverage, giving the drink its fizziness. But what exactly is the pressure inside a bottle of soda?

For the past few years when I’ve been covering introductory concepts in thermodynamics, I’ve made a connection to climate change. My students and I calculate the energy that has been gained by Earth’s oceans as heat, using the following equation that is familiar to students of introductory and general chemistry:

If you know me, you know that I love the Diet Coke and Mentos reaction. It’s so simple to carry out, but yields incredible results! Just drop a few Mentos candies into a bottle of a carbonated beverage and watch the magic take place! See video 1.

Deanna Cullen, Scott Milam, Doug Ragan, and I recently published an article, Rapid Formation of Copper Patinas: A Simple Chemical Demonstration of Why the Statue of Liberty Is Green, in the Journal of Chemical Education¹ that describes how to create a blue-green

A good deal of evidence indicates that wearing facial masks inhibits the spread of COVID-19.^1-4 The spread of the virus appears to occur via airborne transmission.

A Flame Tube, also known as a Ruben’s Tube, is a classic physics experiment that provides a spectacular visual demonstration of sound waves.¹ To make a Ruben’s Tube, a bunch of tiny holes are drilled in a line about 1 cm apart along one side of a steel pipe (Figure 1).