gases

The first time I taught an Honors chemistry class, I noticed there was one additional topic in our unit on gases that differed from our General chem and Concepts chem classes: ideal vs. real gas behavior.

There have been many demonstrations and experiments published online and in the Journal of Chemical Education throughout the years dealing with various aspects of gas chemistry, and CO₂ sublimation in particular.¹ The demonstration where CO₂ generated from dry ice or a chemical reaction is used to snuff out a ca

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?

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.

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).

Along my teaching journey, I started to incorporate more inquiry and modeling activities into my classroom at the expense of practice problems “drilling” concepts. Based on student survey feedback, I learned my students missed these drilling activities. They were craving practice they needed to master and get comfortable with the content.

When trying to convince our students of the pressure we are constantly under from the atmosphere, we typically resort to a favorite demo or two that demonstrates this idea with some sort of dramatic flair. Though a variety of demos exist, I recently tried one that I had never done before but will most certainly continue to use in the future.

In Chemical Mystery #12, curious floating and sinking behavior is exhibited by three different balloons.