public understanding

Easy access to the internet has helped to enable many individuals to gather data to serve a collective purpose.

I have been teaching AP Chemistry for 13 years and every year I have multiple weeks of instruction following the AP Chemistry Exam. I have tried many different ideas for instruction during those weeks. In years past I have taught introduction to organic chemistry and/or nuclear chemistry.

I have always been fascinated by chemical reactions that form shiny, metallic mirrors.

Have you seen the rainbow candy experiment? It's a very simple experiment that involves pouring water into a plate that has M&M's candies or Skittles arranged in a pattern. Very curious shapes of sharply divided regions form spontaneously. How does this happen?! 

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.

Please welcome Dr. Melanie Harvey as the newest member of the ChemEd X Two-Year College (TYC) crew of lead contributors.

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?