pichoro - 10-5-2012 at 10:52
Hi! I've been searching google for a couple of days now, wading through search results, trying to find a set of five exciting organic chemistry
experiments or demonstrations that are suitable for high school students, sophomore to senior. I haven't had a whole lot of luck, but somehow, every
time I search anything related to chemistry, I find myself here. 
So far, I've settled on synthesis of esters from assorted alcohols and carboxylic acids, saponification (perhaps of castor oil), and maybe making
plastic from potato starch. So you see, "exciting" doesn't necessarily mean dangerous - I am dealing with high schoolers. But they're good ones, and
I don't intend to shy away from using things like concentrated strong acids and strong bases.
What I keep running into is that everything I find that's organic is the type of exciting that a science geek gets worked up over, not the kind of
exciting or interesting that catches the eye of a non-scientist, especially a teenager. There also seems to be a really high "cost of entry" as far
as knowledge goes. These kids aren't really going to be in an organic chemistry class, or even a regular chemistry class - it's an Upward Bound
program, and I'm just looking for fun and educational experiments to do with them.
Anyone have any suggestions?
99chemicals - 10-5-2012 at 12:19
Try makeing trimethyl borate. It has a magical green flame and got me quite intested in chemistry. You can distill the stuff to get high purity but
mixing methanol and boric acid has always worked fine with me.
You could also use the trimethyl borate in a "whosh bottle" that is realy cool looking in a dark room.
watson.fawkes - 10-5-2012 at 13:57
The gold standard for this sort of thing is the series Chemical Demonstrations, by Bassam Z. Shakhashiri. There's plenty of material on his web site.
Dig around and tell us here what you like.
sargent1015 - 11-5-2012 at 20:02
Good ol' Shakhashiri. He's the current president of American Chemical Society (ACS) and I've had the privilege of meeting him and watching him
demonstrate. Genius doesn't even begin to describe this man. Fantastic teacher as well.
Mailinmypocket - 12-5-2012 at 15:11
I found this "green" chemistry PDF a few days back.. I did the 4-nitrophenol experiment today and the biodiesel one a few days back, fun and
interesting!
http://dst.gov.in/green-chem.pdf
pichoro - 14-5-2012 at 09:33
I really appreciate the response so far - I'll definitely wade through some of these bigger resources.
Thanks for the friendly replies.
sargent1015 - 14-5-2012 at 20:13
I am really appreciating the green chem article right now! Great find! Will be trying some of these procedures soon! 