Eavesdropping on Professional Chemists

My husband and I are both chemists, but in very different capacities.  My focus is teaching while he is a lab supervisor.  As such, we have very different discussions when we meet with colleagues.  Usually.  A few weeks ago we attended a meeting together and I felt right at home.  The discussion topic was lab audits.  This is when fellow chemists enter a different lab and make sure that everyon

Oxidation of diphenylmethanol to benzophenone

I'm looking for a reliable procedure for an undergraduate organic lab experiment: oxidation of diphenylmethanol to benzophenone.  I am updating our lab experiments and was thinking about introducing phase transfer catalysis, linked to a 2-step Grignard synthesis ( bromobenzene --> phenylmagnesium bromide  -->  diphenylmethanol  --> benzophenone).  I have found a JChem Ed paper that sug

Scientific Practices Post #1: Model Building

Through a series of three blog posts, I’d like to share my thoughts about these scientific practices and how we might communicate about these practices to middle and high school students. I’d love to hear your thoughts along the way! Let’s start with model building…

Melting Pennies

I am fascinated by the chemistry of pennies. I have tried several experiments found in the Journal of Chemical Education.