acids/bases

In Chemical Mystery #16 the colors red, white, and blue are all produced from the same solution that is poured into three separate bottles. You can view this experiment and how it is carried out in Video 1.

Another school year has come and gone, and summertime is upon us! Soon we’ll all be enjoying cookouts, summer conferences (ChemEd 2019, anyone?), swimming at the beach, and fireworks on the Fourth of July.

This lab activity is designed to allow students to explore the use of indicators. It serves as an introduction to acids, bases and pH.

In Chemical Mystery #14, neutralization reactions were used to cause some interesting color changes. See the two videos below:  

Here’s a fun demonstration I did for my students on Valentine’s Day:  

A few years ago, the faculty in our department at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania decided to switch to an atoms first approach to the General Chemistry course.

In Chemical Mystery #13, the contents of a "magic" cup were poured over a blue-colored cleaner. As a result, the color of the cleaner immediately changed from blue to white. In another case, the color change occurs when the magic cup is simply held over the cleaner.

This chemical mystery is very easy to perform. Figuring out how this trick is done is also easy...if you know your chemistry!