Honors Program
Midway Honors
Date of Award
5-2015
Thesis Professor(s)
Stacy Brown
Thesis Professor Department
Pharmaceutical Sciences
Thesis Reader(s)
Edward Onyango, Terence Moore
Abstract
The objective of this study was to evaluate the chemical resistance of common shoe materials regularly worn in undergraduate chemistry laboratories by subjecting the materials to hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide. The materials tested were leather, canvas cotton, and polyester. Due to the lack of restriction on undergraduate laboratory footwear, the research discussed in this thesis is important to undergraduate universities. Currently, many universities across the nation only require undergraduate students to wear close-toed, close-heeled shoes in chemistry laboratories, and often the resistance of the shoe material to acids and bases may not be taken into careful consideration. Overall, the results of this experiment revealed that exposure to the different chemical concentrations of NaOH and HCl did not appear to negatively affect the structural integrity of the fabrics, but according to the mass spectrometry results gathered in this experiment, the three fabrics differed in individual complexities as well as in the compounds extracted following acid and base treatments.
Document Type
Honors Thesis - Withheld
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Lawson, Sarah E., "Investigation of the Chemical Protection Capacity of Common Shoe Materials in Undergraduate Laboratories" (2015). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 268. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/268
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.