Resources
Safety
Safety is the number one priority in any chemistry laboratory! Below are some of the many resources available online to all researchers. Following SOPs and best safety practices are essential to keeping everyone safe. If you do not know how to do something safely, ask for help! It was everyone’s first time using certain chemicals or following certain procedures at one point in their chemical training.
- The safety net (developed jointly by Prof. Alex Miller and Prof. Ian Tonks) contains SOPs and other resources
- UCLA Chemical Banded SOPs (a list of SOPs from UCLA’s EHS)
- University of Minnesota Joint Safety Team (a collection of SOPs, safety moments, & other resources)
- UNC Joint Safety Team
- Safety Moments: Yale; Iowa; UNC; U Chicago
- Dow Lab Safety Academy
- Boston University Chemical Safety (a collection of BU specific information about chemical safety)
- Boston University Laboratory Safety (a collection of BU specific information about general laboratory safety)
Techniques
- The Schlenk line survival guide (a website dedicated to Schlenk line technique)
- Not Voodoo (a website dedicated to organic chemistry techniques and other useful information)
- Air Sensitive Chemistry Techniques: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, & Part 4
- Growing Crystals: Part 1, Part 2, & Part 3
- Electrochemistry CV Guide
- Beginner’s Guide to CV (Jillian Dempsey’s JChemEd article)
- Chemtips
Databases
- Organic Chemistry Portal (great resource for named organic reactions)
- NMR Chemical Shift of Common Impurities
- Spectral Database for Organic Compounds (Spectra of Many Organic Compounds)
- Dan Lehnherr Resources
- The Hans Reich Collection; the whole collection is an amazing resource, the following are especially useful
- Chemical Redox Agents for Organometallic Chemistry
- pKa (in non-aqueous solvents, references list)
- interactive pressure / temperature nomograph
- sealed system pressure calculator
- Mayr’s Database of Reactivity Parameters
- NIST Chemistry Webbook
- Bond Dissociation Energies
- Energy Unit Converter
- Isotope Distribution Calculator
- Cambridge Structural Database (CCDC); X-ray crystal structure database
- Spectroscopy Tables (including NMR, IR, and MS)
- Knovel Critical Tables
- Comprehensive Coordination Chemistry
- UNIX Commands
Scientific Writing
- Tips for writing better science papers
- ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication
- ACS Author Lab
- Whitesides’ Group: Writing a Paper
- Superlative Scientific Writing
- How to Write a First Class Paper
- How to Design a Winning Fellowship Proposal
- Cultivating Advanced Technical Writing Skills through a Graduate-Level Course on Writing Research Proposals
- Northwestern Grant Writing and Written Communication Resources
- The Science of Writing
- University of Michigan, Microsoft Word for Dissertations Guide
Teaching Resources
- VIPER (Virtual Inorganic Pedagogical Electronic Resource)
- BU Center for Teaching and Learning
General Advice & Blogs
- Chemjobber (go to blog for those looking for academic and industrial jobs)
- Advice for Pursuing Graduate School in Chemistry