eng Science and Education Publishing World Journal of Chemical Education 2375-1657 2016-06-30 4 3 67 72 10.12691/wjce-4-3-4 WJCE2016434 article Giorgio Volpi giorgio.volpi@unito.it 1 Department of Chemistry, University of Turin, Via P. Giuria 7, 10125 Turin, Italy An activity for nicotine extraction and detection in tobacco. The procedure is based on the extraction of nicotine from tobacco, followed by the reaction between nicotine with Co(II) and Cu(II) ions. A qualitative experiment is proposed in order to demonstrate and visualize the presence of nicotine in tobacco and to demonstrate metal-nicotine complexes formation and their mass spectrometry (ESI) analysis. http://pubs.sciepub.com/wjce/4/3/4/wjce-4-3-4.pdf nicotine qualitative analysis mass spectrometry (ESI) metal complex naked-eye experiment tobacco first-year undergraduate/general general public high school/introductory chemistry