Student Lab Attire

Eye Protection

Eye protection must be worn at all times in the undergraduate laboratories. Splash goggles with splash proof sides are required eye protection in all undergraduate laboratories. Avoid use of contact lenses in the laboratory; if you wear contact lenses, notify the laboratory supervisor.

Lab Coats

The Dept of Chemistry highly recommends 100% cotton lab coats as they offer superior protection against flames and heat.  Contaminated personal clothing may spread hazards to family and friends, as well as contaminate public areas such as doors, hallways, elevators and food services. Everyone working in an undergraduate laboratory is required to wear laboratory coats at all times. The correct style of lab coat for undergraduate laboratories: button or snap in front; long to at least mid-thigh.

Shoes

Shoes with closed toes and backs are required for everyone working in an undergraduate laboratory. No shoes with cut-outs or vents that leave skin exposed and unprotected are allowed.

Clothing

Appropriate leg coverage by long pants without any tears or holes is required for everyone working in the undergraduate laboratories. Shorts, capri pants, or any other lower-body coverings that leave skin exposed or unprotected are not allowed. Also prohibited are nylon panty hose and tights. Skirts are appropriate if they are not too loose and are long enough to fully cover the leg.

All loose clothing should be confined to avoid easily catching fire, being dragged through chemicals, or becoming entangled in moving machinery. Clothing cannot drag on the floor.

It is recommended that anyone working in undergraduate laboratories remove jewelry to prevent collecting chemicals, contacting electrical sources, catching on laboratory equipment, and/or damage to the jewelry itself.

Gloves 

Use of gloves may be recommended, or even required, in the undergraduate laboratories based on the chemicals being used. The scientific instructional technician or the TA supervising the laboratory will provide specific instructions for the lab session.

Inspect gloves before each use and discard if you see discoloration, punctures, and tears.

Take off gloves before leaving the laboratory. 

Replace gloves often, depending on their frequency of use and permeability of the chemical(s) being handled. Do not re-use disposable gloves. 

Dispose of contaminated gloves by carefully removing them and placing them in the designated waste container. If they are grossly contaminated with hazardous chemicals, then manage them as hazardous waste.

Hair

Any long hair should be tied back or confined when in the undergraduate laboratories to avoid it catching fire, being dragged through chemicals, or becoming entangled in laboratory apparatus.

The rise of physical chemistry

 

The rise of physical chemistry

This is not to say that other approaches to chemistry were neglected, nor that other countries failed to participate in the excitement. Physical studies of chemical compounds and reactions began early in the century, and the field of physical chemistry had achieved maturity by the 1880s. Michael Faraday in England, Hermann Kopp and Robert Bunsen in Germany, and Henri-Victor Regnault in France carried out investigations on the physical characteristics of substances in the period 1830–60. Studies of heat, work, and force led to the rise of thermodynamics around 1850; originally oriented almost entirely to the science of physics, figures such as the American Josiah Willard Gibbs, the Frenchmen Marcellin Berthelot and Pierre Duhem, and the Germans Hermann von Helmholtz and Wilhelm Ostwald then applied energy and entropy concepts to chemistry in the 1870s and ’80s. Electrochemistry, invented by the independent efforts of Berzelius and Humphry Davy in England at the beginning of the century, was pursued fruitfully by Faraday and others. Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff of Germany developed chemical spectroscopy in the late 1850s. Studies on the kinetics of chemical reactions began in the 1860s.

All this work culminated in the “official” establishment of the field of physical chemistry, traditionally considered to be when the Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie (“Journal of Physical Chemistry”) began publication in 1887. The editors were Ostwald and van ’t Hoff, with Svante Arrhenius of Sweden, a future Nobelist, an especially important member of its editorial board. Controversies over the reality of ionic dissociation and other issues connected with electrochemistry, the theory of solutions, and thermodynamics enlivened early issues of the journal.

Physical chemists were in increasing demand as universities turned to them for instruction in basic courses on general and theoretical chemistry. This was nowhere more true than in the United States, with its vigorously expanding educational structure, including both private and state (land-grant) universities and emerging German-influenced doctoral programs. Soon after the turn of the century, two chemists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who had studied with Ostwald, Arthur Noyes and Gilbert Lewis, formed the nucleus of a rising American chemical community. Noyes continued his career at Throop Polytechnic in Pasadena (later renamed the California Institute of Technology, commonly known as Caltech), and Lewis went on to the University of California at Berkeley.

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Bohr model of the atomIn the Bohr model of the atom, electrons travel in defined circular orbits around the nucleus. The orbits are labeled by an integer, the quantum number n. Electrons can jump from one orbit to another by emitting or absorbing energy. The inset shows an electron jumping from orbit n=3 to orbit n=2, emitting a photon of red light with an energy of 1.89 eV.

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Rutherford atomic modelPhysicist Ernest Rutherford envisioned the atom as a miniature solar system, with electrons orbiting around a massive nucleus, and as mostly empty space, with the nucleus occupying only a very small part of the atom. The neutron had not yet been discovered when Rutherford proposed his model, which had a nucleus consisting only of protons.

Physical chemistry was profoundly altered by what some have called the second scientific revolution—namely, the discoveries of the electron, X-rays, radioactivity, and new radioactive elements, the understanding of radioactive emissions and nuclear decay processes, and early versions of the theories of quantum mechanics and relativity. All of this happened in just 10 years, from 1895 to 1905, and the scientific bombshells continued in the following years. In 1911 the British physicist Ernest Rutherford proposed a nuclear model of the atom, but his orbiting electrons seemed to violate classical electromagnetic theory, and the model was not immediately embraced. However, two years later the Danish physicist Niels Bohr resolved some of these anomalies by applying spectroscopic data and the quantum theory of the German physicists Max Planck and Albert Einstein to Rutherford’s model (see figure). Bohr went on to head an international theoretical research group in Copenhagen that led in developing quantum mechanics during the 1920s. In the meantime, Rutherford revealed the existence of the proton and Einstein advanced his theory of general relativity.