Use the FIVE TIPS below to help you gather information on the background of your chosen chemical contaminant and to learn about it's chemistry, uses, how it's produced, impacts, etc.
TIP 1. Check to see if Wikipedia has information about your chemical; if so, read it to gather general background information. If you find good information in Wikipedia, then check the references section of your Wikipedia article to see where the information comes from. If it's coming from a credible source, then access the information directly from that source and and cite it for this project!
TIP 2. Conduct a substance search in SciFinder to get basic information about the structure and chemistry of your contaminant. To search SciFinder, you will first need to register to set up an account. Once you've done that you can navigate to SciFinder from the Cline Library's homepage. Just click to the link to Find Databases (see below), then search for Scifinder by title.
Once you are in SciFinder, click to search by substances, enter your substance, and search it!
Your substance should come up as a result, like you see below. Click on its registry number (in this case 115-96-8) to pull up the full record.
When you open the full record, you'll see information on its structure and physical properties, plus you can use the drop-down selections to explore more information such as hazard statements, etc.
TIP 3. You can also search SciFinder to learn how your chemical contaminant is produced or prepared. From the full record for the substance, click on the references (a.k.a. citations) associated with the substance:
Then click to View All of the Substance Roles:
You can now look for articles by a particular substance role, such as how the drug is produced (see the preparation or synthetic preparation categories). Or if you see a link to synthesis then try that too. Plus there's lots more you can explore:
TIP 4. You can also gather background information with web searches (using Google, for example). Here are some example searches you might try, using the chemical ibuprofen as an example:
You could also try searching the web for your contaminant along concepts like these:
When searching the internet, you'll need to make sure the information you gather is from credible websites. If you are not sure what constitutes a credible website, then a good strategy is to limit your results to websites from .gov domain. You can easily do this using Google's Advanced Google Search mode:
TIP 5. Books are great for providing general background information. To search for books, go to Cline Library's Homepage, and enter searches into the Quick Search box. But before you search, use the dropdown selection to the left of the search box to specifically look for Books & Media. For example, below you see a search for books on the general topic of environmental contaminants. The books you find in this search may well have chapters on the particular contaminant you are studying.
Or you can try searches on the type of chemical you are researching. For example, if you were researching flame retardents, check out the great books that come up when you run a search:
