Without question, the use of both natural products and colorful visuals can spark interest and also provide a high degree of student engagement.  The same chemicals naturally developed in plants to attract animals, continue to ignite interest and delight scientist and students alike.  In this paper, the natural products produced by plants that provide the brilliant colors of flowers and fruits will be leveraged for their chemical behavior to provide a visual means of detecting atmospheric sulfur dioxide gas.   This reactivity not only provides a colorful chemistry demonstration but also illustrates the importance and potential of natural plants as useful chemical bio-sensors.   Our studies are especially well suited for examining the chemical processes of the everyday world using plant pigments, something that everyone will generally find is both familiar and easy to related.    Plants contains a wide range of pigmenting compounds, all of which have unique rolls and associated chemistry. Green photosynthetic chlorophyll is but one example out of this literal rainbow assortment. Anthocyanins represent an entirely separate class of pigmenting compounds, producing dozens of colors. These aromatic carbon compounds are acutely susceptible to chemical alterations by small amounts of sulfur products associated with atmospheric sulfur dioxide.  The resulting changes, through pH change and configuration changes from direct chemical reaction, produce dramatic visual alterations.

Sulfur dioxide is to dye for

2019 Spring National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.