Date of Award

2011

Degree Type

Thesis

Department

Chemistry

First Advisor

Riga, Alan T.

Subject Headings

Thermal analysis, Universities and colleges -- Research, thermal analysis, thermogravimetry, differential scanning calorimetry, thermal mechanical analysis, education, resinkit, milk of magnesia, aldohexose monosaccharide, thermal expansion, decomposition, glass transition

Abstract

Three experiments were performed to demonstrate that thermal analysis is an important tool for use in colleges and universities for conducting scientific research. The first experiment used thermogravimetry, differential scanning calorimetry and thermal mechanical analysis to compare polymer resins from two ResinKits®, one from 1994 and the other from 2010. Analysis was done to determine if resins from the 1994 kit were viable standards. The experiments showed significant thermal differences between select resins and it was concluded that resins form the 1994 ResinKit® are no longer acceptable as standards.The second experiment used thermogravimetry and differential scanning calorimetry to determine the concentration of bound and un-bound water in commercial and generic samples of milk of magnesia. Those thermal methods were compared to traditional methods and it was determined that thermogravimetry was best suited for determining bound water and that differential scanning calorimetry revealed thermal differences that none of the other thermal techniques could detect.In the third experiment, four chemically similar aldohexose monosaccharides were evaluated using thermogravimetry to determine if the thermal analytical technique was sensitive enough to differentiate between the four monosaccharides. It was determined that thermogravimetry could detect differences between two groups of monosaccharides, but not between each monosaccharide individually.The result of these experiments clearly shows that thermal analysis is a valuable tool for scientific research and needs to be included more as part of the curriculum for chemistry students and not delegated as a "niche" study of only limited value

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