ONS Solubility Challenge in Teaching Lab

Last year Brent Friesen started to experiment with using his organic chemistry teaching lab at Dominican University to carry out new reactions in the pursuit of making new anti-malarial agents, as part of the UsefulChem project.

This year, Brent is involving his class in the Open Notebook Science Challenge to measure the solubility of a variety of organic compounds in non-aqueous solvents (CHEM254). He took the time to write up a comprehensive laboratory handout on the topic so I'm hopeful that this exercise will go smoothly.

As we've discussed repeatedly during the past year the potential for university teaching labs to contribute real new science while training students is immense. It only requires instructors like Brent to take the time to make appropriate changes in the curriculum.

The lab is scheduled to run Jan 21-23, 2009.