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The Shell Seeker: What Is the Quantity of Shell in the Lido di Venezia Sand? A Calibration DRIFTS Experiment
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    The Shell Seeker: What Is the Quantity of Shell in the Lido di Venezia Sand? A Calibration DRIFTS Experiment
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    Dipartimento di Scienze Molecolari e Nanosistemi, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Dorsoduro 2137, 30123 Venezia, Italia
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    Journal of Chemical Education

    Cite this: J. Chem. Educ. 2011, 88, 9, 1298–1303
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    https://doi.org/10.1021/ed100832e
    Published July 14, 2011
    Copyright © 2011 The American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.

    Abstract

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    In this experiment, students are given a fanciful application of the standard addition method to evaluate the approximate quantity of the shell component in a sample of sand collected on the Lido di Venezia seashore. Several diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform (DRIFT) spectra are recorded from a sand sample before and after addition of known amounts of powdered shell. A peak, characteristic of shells, is selected and its normalized intensity is plotted against the percentage of added shell powder. By means of a linear regression, the initial concentration of the component from shells of the sand is estimated. The proposed approach, based on a method for mixtures and impurity determination, requires students to perform DRIFT spectroscopic measurements of a powdery material and, depending on the starting material, offers the chance to verify the influence of grain size on spectral features. Well-known distortion effects on peak intensities and line shapes due to sample inhomogeneities that usually make DRIFTS a poor technique for quantitative measurements are circumvented by asking students to follow a strict procedure for sample preparation. The proposed experiment can be carried out in one or two lab periods depending whether students are asked to prepare starting powders or determine the optical response curve and is designed for either undergraduate or graduate students.

    Copyright © 2011 The American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.

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    This article is cited by 8 publications.

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    2. Nobuyoshi Koga and Kazuyuki Nishikawa . Mutual Relationship between Solid-State Aragonite–Calcite Transformation and Thermal Dehydration of Included Water in Coral Aragonite. Crystal Growth & Design 2014, 14 (2) , 879-887. https://doi.org/10.1021/cg4018689
    3. Nobuyoshi Koga, Daisuke Kasahara, and Tomoyasu Kimura . Aragonite Crystal Growth and Solid-State Aragonite–Calcite Transformation: A Physico–Geometrical Relationship via Thermal Dehydration of Included Water. Crystal Growth & Design 2013, 13 (5) , 2238-2246. https://doi.org/10.1021/cg400350w
    4. Alessandra De Lorenzi Pezzolo . An Exercise on Calibration: DRIFTS Study of Binary Mixtures of Calcite and Dolomite with Partially Overlapping Spectral Features. Journal of Chemical Education 2013, 90 (1) , 118-122. https://doi.org/10.1021/ed2008729
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    8. A. Quaranta, G. Valotto, A. De Lorenzi Pezzolo, G.A. Mazzocchin. Ion Beam Induced Luminescence capabilities for the analysis of coarse-grained river sediments. Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy 2014, 121 , 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.saa.2013.10.038

    Journal of Chemical Education

    Cite this: J. Chem. Educ. 2011, 88, 9, 1298–1303
    Click to copy citationCitation copied!
    https://doi.org/10.1021/ed100832e
    Published July 14, 2011
    Copyright © 2011 The American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.

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