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Education

Chemistry In Pictures

Chemistry in Pictures: PPM

by Craig Bettenhausen
June 29, 2022

A jar is filled with colorful beads.
Credit: John R. Yates III

Analytical and environmental chemists are used to thinking about parts per million, tossing around the abbreviation ppm like it was no big deal. To help his students comprehend what ppm really means and how challenging it can be to detect things at ppm levels or below, Scripps chemistry professor John R. Yates III uses this jar filled with 1 million tiny beads. One bead out of 1 million is black—1 ppm. Yates says no one has ever found the one black bead in the 25 years he’s had the jar. “I did look, and the search can drive you crazy,” he says.

Credit: John R. Yates III

The lid of jar says how many of each color of beads is in the jar.
Credit: John R. Yates III

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