Highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of research, we present a series of experiments for undergraduate lab courses that teach the principles of preparative ion exchange chromatography and flame emission spectroscopy. Through these inquiry-based experiments, the students learn about experimental design and instrument limitations, naturally…

Students in a typical instrumental analysis course may learn more than 30 analytical techniques. There are more than 150 components associated with the instrumentation that they learn. To help students organize this large amount of information, we classified these components into four categories: sources, samples, discriminators, and detectors. In…

Success in undergraduate chemical experiments requires students to develop knowledge and skills of instrumentation, equipment, and chemical techniques. In this technology report, we propose an adaptable and user-focused strategy to improve students' foundational skill and proficiency with chemical laboratory techniques and instrumentation. The…

Virtually all modern chemical instrumentation is controlled by computers. While software packages are continually becoming easier to use, allowing for more researchers to utilize more complex instruments, conveying some level of understanding as to how computers and instruments communicate is still an important part of the undergraduate…

Chromatographic instrumentation has been really influential in shaping the modern chemical practice, and yet it has been largely overlooked by history of science.Gas chromatography in the 1960s was considered the analytical technique closer to becoming dominant, and being the first automated chromatography set the standards that all the subsequent…

A public demonstration of laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICPMS) for fast and sensitive qualitative elemental analysis of solid everyday objects is described. This demonstration served as a showcase model for modern instrumentation (and for elemental analysis, in particular) to the public. Several steps were made to…

The list of physiological events in which sex steroids play a role continues to increase. To decipher the roles that sex steroids play in any condition requires high quality cohorts of samples and assays that provide highly accurate quantitative measures. Liquid and gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (LC-MS and GC-MS) have…

In a typical chemistry instrumentation laboratory, students learn analytical techniques through a well-developed procedure. Such an approach, however, does not engage students in a creative endeavor. To foster the intrinsic motivation of students' desire to learn, improve their confidence in self-directed learning activities and enhance their…

For most chemistry curricula, laboratory-based activities in quantitative and instrumental analysis continue to be an important aspect of student development/training, one that can be more effective if conceptual understanding is delivered through an inquiry-based process relating the material to relevant issues of public interest and student…

The teaching of instrumental analysis for many small colleges and high schools continues to be stymied by high-cost, complicated maintenance, high power requirements, and often the sheer bulk of the instrumentation. Such issues have led us to develop inexpensive instruments as part of a SMILE initiative (small, mobile instruments for laboratory…

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…

The physical properties of oxygen, in particular, the blue color of the liquid phase, the red glow of its chemiluminescence, and its paramagnetism as shown by the entrapment or deflection of liquid oxygen by a magnetic field, can be investigated in a regular school setting with hand-held spectrophotometers and digital cameras. In college-level…

Access to state-of-the-art instrumentation, namely nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, early in the college curriculum was provided to undergraduate students in an effort to improve student perceptions of science. Proton NMR spectroscopy was introduced as part of an aspirin synthesis in a guided-inquiry approach to spectral…

A new lecture/laboratory course to offer advanced biochemical training for undergraduate and early graduate students has been developed in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. This unique course offers students an opportunity to work hands-on with modern instrumentation not normally found in a predominately…

The purpose of this study is to find out what students in the first chemistry course at the undergraduate level (general chemistry for science majors) know about the affordances of instrumentation used in the general chemistry laboratory and how their knowledge develops over time. Overall, students see the PASCO(TM) system as a useful and accurate…