Teaching with Arduino: Porphyrinoids’ fluorescence in olive oil

Abstract

During the pandemic period, we were forced to reconsider teaching of practical labs, as students had mainly to work at home. It was the occasion to explore the use of cheap microcontroller kits for teaching chemistry and to work out some manipulations with household products. Back to normal life, it is important to valorize this equipment and work to design simple chemistry experiments which could be performed by students at home with Arduino kits adapted to chemistry, to illustrate various courses in addition to classical manipulations performed in the laboratory with specific equipment and products. We describe here the construction of a simple and cheap Arduino-based fluorimeter and its use to study relative porphyrinoids (mainly chlorophylls and pheophytins) contents in olive oils, and the effect of heating on the degradation of such substances. We used an Arduino Uno kit with a LED, a light-to-frequency converter associated with an excitation-blocking filter, and a 3D-printed sample holder.