Old Exams, Workshops, Reviews, Lectures, Quiz's

http://www.washington.edu/uaa/gateway/advising/downloads/gpamcat.pdf

For those of you out there like myself studying for those upcoming final exams here is a little bit of help. I am sure many of you like myself have teachers that wrote the book and basically stand in the front of the room and read you their textbook. It may be nice to have the teacher do this for you, but in reality they aren't giving you any concrete notes making it harder to learn. Here is a list of some useful links to other schools organic chemistry notes which have been helping me a lot.

So I recently just put my bare hands into a tub of this on accident! Anyone that will take a Biology or Genetics Lab will probably come across this chemical.

Use: To detect nucleic acids in agarose gel's during electrophoresis.

Hazard: MUTAGEN!! when ethidium bromide makes its way into your cell it can slip in between your base pairs of DNA and affect replication and transcription .

For more information http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Ethidium_bromide

-K.B.-

Maybe superman wore one of these under his costume. This new breakthrough is a boron layered shirt that can stop a speeding bullet. This is done by dipping a t-shirt into a boron solution, then heating it in an oven at more than 1000C. What happens is the cotton fibers change into carbon fibers.The carbon fibers react with the boron solution and produce boron carbide - the same material used to make bulletproof plates in armored vests. The material is incredibly strong and flexible enough that it can be worn. It can also block ultraviolet rays, and possibly life-threatening neutron. Don't worry this won't be the last time you hear about this new boron coating technique. If they could do this to a t-shirt just imagine the possibilities.



For more information on this:
http://www.news.com.au/technology/boron-treated-wal-mart-t-shirt-can-stop-speeding-bullet-says-scientist/story-e6frfro0-1225852806454

-MF

I always saw this in cartoons as a kid, but always wanted to know if it was true. Here is the break down of what actually occurs, along with the thermal conductivities of everything going on. Just in case you do not want to actually look through the diagram, yes this can happen to you. So next time anyone tries to fool you with this cartoon trick, don't fall for it. You may be stuck there for a while.

-MF

Hes a cool website I stumbled upon a few days ago. You can see the shells, spins, orbitals, etc. of different elements.

http://keithcom.com/atoms/

No this is not a recent scientific breakthrough, this is just one of those reactions that all people should know. It is a simple single step, yes you read correctly, single step reaction that leads to the formation of a six membered ring. You may be wondering why is this an important reaction. Six membered rings are incredibly stable due to their low angle strain and great molecular orbital overlap and are all around us. All the reaction needs is a diene and a dienophile for this to occur and very little energy. These reactions form compounds that people take for granted. If you would like to test this experiment out for yourself it can be done very simply. All you need is some 3-sulfolene, maleic anhydride and dry xylene for the reaction. A reflux is done under gentle heat and thats it, to make the reaction go to completion. You may want to make sure that the solid maleic anhydride melts before the reaction goes to far or it may not all react with the butadiene formed from the 3-sulfone under heat. Causing some problems with correct yield. Other than that it's a simple reaction you should all try. Also dont forget to filtrate the reaction at the end to collect your product.

-MF

For more information on this reaction go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diels%E2%80%93Alder_reaction