Green chemistry: help

Navigating the web site

The site opens with the welcome screen, from where clicking the Earth image gains access to the site proper. Navigation is achieved with two navigation bars. The upper one is dark green, and is always displayed. It contains links to the home section and the contents page, and also includes links to the principles, structures and glossary pop-up windows. These windows provide definitions and other information supporting the main topics. In the home section and the five main topics a second light-green navigation bar is displayed for navigation within the current section.

Links in the contents page give access to the five main topics (described here) and to the background material (described here).

Using the main topics

The contents page gives access to the resource's  five main topics:  What is green chemistry?, Ibuprofen - a case study in green chemistry, Liquid carbon dioxide for safer dry cleaning, Biodiesel - using renewable resources and How does waste affect our environment?. Each topic is sub-divided into sections containing student material and teacher's notes, accessed via the light-green topics navigation bar.

These main topics can be viewed on-line in a web browser, in which case there are blue links to related information such as the glossary of terms, the principles of green chemistry, selected chemical structures and answers to questions. The main topics also contain red links to external web sites.

Alternatively, the topics can be downloaded as Word or PDF documents by clicking the appropriate icon in the light-green topics navigation bar. These documents are then suitable for off-line use, editing or printing (see below for details).

Using the background material

The five background material documents (Aspects of sustainability in chemical education. An organic chemistry teaching resource for the new millennium, Biodiesel, Plastics from renewable raw materials and biologically degradable plastics from fossil raw materials, The substitution of toxicologically critical solvents in the residue analysis of pesticides,  Microwaves and The twelve principles of green chemistry) are available in Word and PDF format only and may be downloaded by clicking the appropriate icon in the contents page (see below for details).

Downloading Word and PDF material

Each section of the five main topics and the five background material documents may be downloaded as a Microsoft Word™ document or in Portable Document Format (PDF). These documents may be used when not connected to the internet, to produce high quality printed output, and in the case of the Word documents may also be edited.

Which document format you choose to download will depend a number of factors summarised in the table below.

Format Advantages Disadvantages
Word
  • Document may be edited and tailored for a particular application.
  • File is large and slow to download.
  • Requires Word 97 or later.
PDF
  • File is small and quick to download.
  • Document may be used on any computer system with Adobe® Acrobat® Reader®.
  • Document may not be edited.
  • Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader (available free from Adobe).

To download a document

Note: this information may vary slightly depending on the browser type and version in use.

Either:

  1. Click the icon to display the Word format version of the given document, or else the icon for the PDF version.
  2. To save the Word document, choose Save As... from the File menu. Select the folder on your local disk you wish to save the document into, and then press OK.
    To save the PDF document, click the Save icon on the toolbar, and select the folder and filename as described above.

Or:

  1. Click with the left mouse button on the or icon, and choose Save Target As... from the pop-up menu.
  2. Select the folder on your local disk you wish to save the document into, and then press OK.

Copying graphics into other applications

To copy any graphic from this site into another application click on the graphic using the right mouse button and select Copy. Next switch to the other application and select Paste from the Edit menu.
 

System requirements

This site has been optimised for use with Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6 or Netscape version 7, but will work with minor changes to the appearance with version 4 of both of these browsers.

  • Javascript must be enabled to use the principles, structures and glossary pop-up windows.
  • Microsoft Word™ documents require Word 97 / 6 or later version.
  • The PDF documents may be viewed using Adobe® Acrobat® Reader®, which may be downloaded for free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html.