Teaching Chemistry with Household Items

Laboratory instruction and experimentation is a vital component of chemistry education. Such procedures are designed to generate interest in the subject matter and compliment textbook and lecture materials. As opposed to lecture alone, supplementing the course with laboratory experiences aims to increase student retention and comprehension. However, for new laboratory students, quantitative assignments using obscure chemicals can be tedious and imposing which can create a barrier to learning. This manual compiles and expands upon existing qualitative literature demonstrations providing educators with five experiments featuring a household product to introduce a general chemistry concept. The household items highlighted in these experiments are: aluminum foil, milk, vinegar, rubbing alcohol, orange juice, soda-pop, and glow sticks. These ordinary household substances were selected to showcase unfamiliar properties of everyday items. The general chemistry concepts introduced in this manual include recognizing the difference between reactants and catalysts, comparisons of pH and relative acidity, redox reactions, and reaction kinetics. Each experiment contains an introduction, list of materials, an experimental procedure complete with illustrations, and conclusion. This manual is designed to be an easy-to-follow step-by-step guide for educators teaching introductory chemistry classes in order to engage students in a fun and relatable manner.

HNO (nitroxyl) is a biologically relevant unstable small molecule which rapidly dimerizes in aqueous solution. Thus, there is a need for HNO donors that can quickly release HNO “on demand”. Our group has developed a first generation family of HNO donors which generate HNO rapidly through photolysis. However, some competition from a photoredox side reaction reduces the utility of these molecules. The goal of this project was to explore the impact of incorporating a methyl substituent on the rate and selectivity of HNO generation. The poster will describe the studies completed to date on the synthesis and photochemistry of HNO donor.

Stimuli-Responsive Liquid Crystal Polymer Particles: Fabrication

through Microphotopolymerization

Author: Ryan Williams-Physics Undergraduate Student

Advisors: Jakub Kolacz and Dr. Qi-Huo Wei

Liquid Crystal Institute

Kent State University

Stimuli-responsive particles can be used as building blocks for reconfigurable mechanical or electromagnetic metamaterials and as carriers for drug delivery. In this work, we develop processes to fabricate micro-sized liquid crystal polymeric particles. These particles have well controlled molecular orientational ordering, and may be actuated by light or temperature variation. We will present our progress in the fabrication and characterization of boomerang shaped liquid crystal polymer particles.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for monitoring the safety and efficacy of pharmaceuticals, food supply, cosmetics, as well as other biological products. While the production of manmade drugs is strictly governed by FDA regulations, dietary supplements, including homeopathic remedies, are not subject to the same rigorous rules and guidelines because they are classified as foods, not drugs. As a result, supplement companies are tasked with developing tools and methods for evaluating the identity and safety of their products, with little guidance from the US FDA or US Pharmacopeia for how to screen materials.

In the present study, we demonstrate the use of direct, high-resolution mass spectrometry approaches to screen raw materials to be used in natural, dietary supplements. Specifically, the Direct Analysis in Real Time (DART) ionization source is used to directly desorb and ionize molecules from raw materials. A high-resolution Orbitrap mass spectrometer is used to separate and detect ions based on the mass-to-charge ratios. Key chemical components in these raw materials were identified with this approach and used to classify/grade these bulk natural products. Many compounds have been detected in these materials including curcumin and tumerone in Turmeric. Finally, the applicability of this approach to detect and identify adulterants in the materials, including pesticides and herbicides, will also be presented.

In my course of education the fields of Music and Math have fascinated me by their separation in description, math being considered a science and music a subject of art. However I now see them both as an art and a science. I am a cellist, pianist, and trumpeter and in my pursuit to master these instruments I began to blur the lines between math and music seeing music in a more mathematical light, recognizing the distances between notes on a cello’s finger board and opening the piano to see the harp and the length and thickness of stings; I started to think that math was in essence the basis of all music. For my mathematical investigation I wanted to see how exactly mathematical concepts existed in music and then to see if I could derive these concepts from my playing of cello.

Mathematics is the fundamental building block of sound and in its musical form an even larger array of number phenomena exist. Although the mathematical properties of sound had been studied by the ancient Chinese, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian societies, the scholars of the Pythagorean School is ancient Greece were the first to investigate and formulate musical scales and tuning systems in terms of numerical ratios and functions. They had believed that all nature consists of harmony arising out of the small integers of 1, 2, 3, and 4; regarding them as the source of all perfection as did Confucius from China and Indian theorists. These numbers are crucial in the equations of musical scales and tuning systems.

Diacyglycerol pyrophosphate (DGPP) an uncommon membrane lipid found in plants, and yeast, but never in mammals is formed from phosphatidic acid. The function of DGPP during stress signaling is unclear. Therefore, the physiochemical properties, specifically the ionization of the head group, were analyzed to elucidate the function of DGPP. The presence of the trans-membrane peptide KALP23, to mimic the interaction with DGPP binding proteins, caused an increase in the ionization of DGPP. This increase in negative charge might be due to the decrease in interfacial pH by the cationic lysine residues of KALP23, or might be due to direct hydrogen bond interaction between KALP23 and DGPP. We investigated the effect of positive charge on the negative charge of DGPP to delineate these separate effects. Next, we investigated the interaction of PA with DGPP and the resultant effect on the charge of both of these signaling lipids. The results are discussed in terms of the electrostatic-hydrogen bond switch model previously described for the ionization and protein interaction of PA.