Honors Chemistry

Course Syllabus

Text:

Chemistry: Matter and Changes. Butelezi, T., Dingrando, L., Hainen, N., Wistrom, C., & Zike, D., McGraw Hill. Glencoe, NY: 2008.

Instructors and contact information:

The commonly used tool for land mine detection today is the hand-held metal detector. Chemical sensors have been investigated for mine detection. For chemical species having favorable spectral properties, remote sensing can be achieved by fluorescence light detection and ranging LIDAR. Nitroaromatic explosives exhibit strong ultraviolet absorption but low fluorescence, thus direct detection is not practical.

Most of the Zinc Metal Complexes are  fluorescent in nature. But they lose this ability when exposed to chemicals contained in plastic explosives. ( commonly reffered as Quenching). Since each of the complexes react by losing different amounts of their fluorescent ability, they can be used to create sensor arrays that produce a different visual display when exposed to different explosives. This differential que

Got a moment? I ll give u some important information. Have you heard of Bispheol A? Are you aware of its negative effects? If u are, thats great! Or otherwise, i ll detail it.

Bisphenol A is a  chemical used in high volume during the production of polycarbonate plastics and some resins.  Polycarbonate plastics are widely employed in food and drink containers. Resins are also used as protective lining in metal food containers and in water supply pipes. 

The problem comes from the finding that BPA can mimic female sex hormone, estradiol.  Studies reveal that a pregnant mom's exposure to BPA can affect the fertility of the female fetus later in her life.  Experiments on rats reveal breast and prostrate tissue abmormalities in offsprings, which may possibly lead to cancer. 

But these results as such may not be applicable to humans, as the in vivo and animal studies involve higher doses of BPA.  But considering its wide exposure in humans on a daily basis, there is some concern about the health effects of BPA, a report of US National Toxicology Program says.  Govt. o

A. SO₂          B.  CH₃OH           C.  CF₃COOOH    D.  Pyridine.

2. Identify nucleophiles  from the followings.

A. SO₃             B. SO₂Cl₂             C.  H₂O                  D.  POCl_3..

3. Which one of the followings is strongest nucleophiles in SN² in proteic solvents.

A.  CH₃S^-   

As it is well known that most of the available antiferromagnets finds application in magnetic heads for reading data from a disc, chromium being an antiferromagnet can be a suitable candidate for these applications.

Graphene is a one-atom-thick planar sheet of sp2-bonded carbon atoms that are densely packed in a honeycomb crystal lattice. Its is the basic structural element of all other graphitic materials including graphite, and fullerenes. It is a large aromatic molecule, an extension of a family of flat polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

We can hope that it will soon replace the custom Silicon wafer technology which is always under the shadow of the threatening Moore's Law!

 NH3=N+3H

i think my teacher made a mistake but still....I need answers

The cantilever tip temperature can be precisely controlled over a temperature range of 25 to 1,000 degrees Celsius. Using this special cantilever probe, anyone selectively image and extract a very small sample of the material to be analyzed. Also the actual mass of this sample can be determined by a cantilever resonance technique. For the analysis the sample, the heater temperature is raised to slightly above the melting point of the sample material. The material is then analyzed by complementary Raman or Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic imaging, which provides a molecular characterization

The increasing oil prices and their less availability together with the alerts on global warming triggered the recent increased interest in Biofuels.  Different countries, depending on their flora and fauna, explore the possibilities for Biofuel production, like corn and soybeans in US, cane sugar in Brazil, palm oil in Indonesia etc.  The sugar crops are fermented with microbes and enzymes on industrial scale to produce Bioethanol, while oils from crops are heated and changed their characteristics to produce Biodiesel. 

To count of the me

We already heard a lot of these types of stories. What I wonder is that, why these type of chemistry related extra solar discoveries are short lived. Recently flashed news reads that (and in Nature 2008 also!), scientists scrutinizing the Hubble’s telescope data have found the presence of Methane in an extra solar planet named HD 189733b. The Planet is orbiting its sun some 65 lightyears away and recorded an atmospheric temperature of 1000K. This however  ruled out the existence of methane emitting living organisms in HD 189733b.

If scientists say that the signature of methane is surprising in these types of distant planets, as they expected the planet's atmospheric carbon to be largely in the form of carbon monoxide, then why doesn’t it surprises the fellow researchers in ch

Have you ever thought of cell phones with virus-based rechargeable batteries?  What do u feel of cell phones which mend their cracks when dropped?   Interesting, isn’t it?    Well, this was the real motivation for Prof.  Angela Belcher and her colleagues from MIT, who developed the first biologically based nano-scale rechargeable battery. 

Belcher is the director of Biomolecular Materials Group at MIT, and her research won MacArthur Fou

Maintaing a healthy and clean environment and tackling the increasing fuel and oil prices and decreasing fossil fuel supplies are beeing big manace for scientists. I think we chemists can effectively address these current problems by giving importance to bio-inspired chemistry. There is notion that only solar cells and wind energy is available for tackling these problems. Very few are looking towards Chemistry for alternative energy sources. (ofcourse some university researchers).

Chemists, by understanding the basic processes of some biological models can  create systems that mimic biomolecules and produce energy in an efficient and cost effective manner. This simple idea is nowdays term

 Researcher Dr. John Tse and his colleauges in Germany reported superconducting activity in a new family of
hydrogen compund. They put hydrogen in to a molecular compund and applied high pressure inorder to get superconductivity.
Most commercially available superconducting materials operates only at very low temperatures. This requires
super cooling equipments which are highly expensive.Their research in this area is aimed at improving the
critical temperature (Tc) for superconductivity so that new superconductors can be operated at higher temperatures
or even without a refrigerant. Anyway this seems to be an important breakthrough in modern Chemistry. Superconductivity
almost lost its past charm and glamour in research and now this brilliant chemists opened a new way
in modern chemistry.

Are U a fresh chemistry graduate? Thinking of joining for a PhD? then here are some tips which i can recollect based on my past experiences.

For those who wish to join for a PhD, my first advice is that be sure you are ENOUGH Motivated. Its a long term 'struggle' spaning your mid twenties or even more! Eventhough the grants and fellowships are fair enough to make an income for a PhD student (in EU), its hard to be in the turbulent stream of Research for more than 4 years. But this doesnt matter if you are enough motivated. After all the final 'Fruit' is yours! getting a prefix 'Dr' and building an excellent career there onwards is really exciting and much more eazy nowadays.

Finding an area of interest is your next

Why does it happen? Some people say it depends on the physical conditions, some others say it depends on the chemists' skill. But is it true? Even if a skilled person could make it happen, will he able to repeat it consistently? Giving attention to details and a very keen observation of condiions, like the amount of solvent, whether solid phase or solution phase reaction is more favoured etc. may help a sharp minded chemist to excel in his/her synthetic persuites. 

The thing is that there are a lot of synthetic reactions which are very much feasible and there are a variety of chemical products availabel on the market (with some of them with killing p