Because of the rapidly changing nature of chemical instrumentation, students must be trained in how to learn and understand new instruments. Toward this end, students are asked to create small instrument manuals, or instrument profiles, for the major pieces of equipment studied during an instrumental analysis course. This writing-intensive process of creating instrument profiles requires that students understand the basics of each type of instrument and that they are able to compare the instrument to other instruments. With the use of block and schematic diagrams, the major components within an instrument are emphasized such that students can discover subtle differences between types of instruments. Students' ability to teach themselves new instruments is demonstrated at the end of the semester by creating an instrument profile for an instrument not specifically discussed during the course and by giving a short oral presentation to the class, providing everyone with brief exposure to many more technologies. (Contains 2 figures.)