Australia's Science Forum

We have a teacher wanting to do the AccessNano/TechNYou "Making Gold Nanoparticles" experiment.
It calls for gold hydrogen tetrachloride (Chloroauric acid) HAuCl4.3H2O.
I can't find it anywhere. Any clues where to get it easily, how much it costs or if it is a mixture?

Text book P273 Addison-Wesley: Chemistry, prentice hall, Matta etal, 2002.

Students generate different gases and use indicators to visualise gas diffusion. Different solutions are dropped on a petri dish in a patter and drops change colour as gas diffuses.

Our Yr11Chem prac "Kinetic Theory in Action" requires NaHSO3 (sodium hydrogensulfite / sodium bisulfite), but this chemical is hard to find or not easy to order.

Can anyone tell me where they get their NaHSO3 from, or if you subsitute something else for it in the prac?

Annette.

Mainly students use them for pracs, but occasionally a teacher or another department borrows them. We have them numbered. Sometimes they come and go every lesson for different pracs, some students keep them running on an experiment over a couple of lessons. There are just so many variances that can ...

Hi everyone, Just after some ideas for keeping a track of dataloggers. We have 22 of them which are used by various classes all the time. We always seem to be missing some at the end when all the pracs/EEIs are finished and we end up running around looking everywhere for them until they are found. T...

We don't have CSIS here in Qld, so can't refer to it. We are told to read the SDS and make a decision from that. It is classed as a Toxic substance, and the material and container must be disposed of a hazardous waste, therefore deemed by us as a chemical not to be used in a school. From RiskAssess:...

Hi,

Does anyone have a prac for Extracting Caffeine from Tea (which doesn't use a banned chemical like Dichloromethane)?

Annette.

We can get it at Coles here in QLD (pink lid variety), but it can be ordered through chemical suppliers as Sodium tetraborate decahydrate.

(It works well in the washing machine - good for removing stains!)

Hi all, Just wanting some advice. Biology soil testing EEI starts tomorrow. Brand new and hardly used pH meters were put in buffer solution 4 & 7 today. We had readings of 4.01-4.10 and 7.01-7.08. Is this acceptable? We (labbies) think so, but HOD thinks they need calibrating so that they all re...

We blend dry split peas to a powder. Carry out the experiment as directed the rest of the way. We use a glass hook to pull out the DNA strands.

Thanks everyone! EEI Prac Order form is a goer!

Thanks for that! Great ideas. We find students never order enough and we are always playing catchup. Or they don't like sharing and keep it all for themselves or use other people's stuff! Does anyone make up bulk sucrose or NaCl solutions at a stock % and get the student's to do their own dilutions?

Yep, we have 45+ individual or 20+ group EEIs.......

Thanks everyone. I agree, more than 48 hours is required due to the individual requirements for each person or group. Trying to work out a process going forward to meet teacher, student and labbies expectations so that it all works smoothly.

Just wondering how much notice you ask your teachers to give you for EEIs?
Do you stick to the usual 48hours as for pracs, or do you have a different set timeframe for EEIs?

Thanks for all that! Very interesting with all the extra uses for the system.

Thanks! We have a system designed by a previous IT staff member. It is starting to breakdown and the time involved to fix, manage and maintain it is too great for our current IT members......

Hi everyone,

Our in-school online booking system is on it's last legs. What commercially available program (if any) do you use for teachers to book pracs?


Thanks!

Thanks. We use Scientriffic quite a bit. The label maker from Omega is great and the asset organiser looks good too.

Almost finished my Cert IV Lab Techniques through Symbio. I got credits for some of the units in my Cert III Lab Skills I had already done. The units of study are rolled up in 6 workplace projects and have been easy to do in work time. Our trainer from Symbio visits about once a month and he has bee...