A mole of lightning

Lightning strikes Earth about 100 times each second, or 8.6 million times a day. Based on the information above, estimate the minimum number of years it will take for one mole of lightning to hit the earth.

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Category: Student challenges Magazine puzzles

New trends and developments of solid phase microextraction (SPME)

Solid phase microextraction (SPME) is a fast, environmentally friendly, field-compatible method of sample preparation for chemical analysis. In 2001, Chem 13 News published an introductory article about the newly developed technique, and since then its popularity has grown, expanding to scientists in many disciplines.

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Category: Feature Chemistry News and updates

Chemistry explosions are all bang and no buck

I am a chemist and I am heavily involved in science outreach, especially in chemistry. I have built a library of demonstrations that I can pull out to show scientific principles.

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Category: Pedagogy, opinion and advice Viewpoint and advice

Book review

On Fact and Fraud is a little book with a large message about staying clean in science. Goodstein has had a lot of experience with scientific fraud both as a professor — teaching a course on Scientific Ethics at California Institute of Technology, Caltech — and as an administrator.

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Category: Recommended Book, DVDs and websites