Sunday, August 5, 2007

Instrumental Analysis

Hey chemistry folk!

I am team teaching an instrumental analysis course this Fall. We hope to cover all of the major types of instrumentation and how they are used. I will also include a bit of structural elucidation.

Any opinions on texts available? Any suggestions?

If you were taking this course now (knowing what you know now) what would you most value?

Thanks for doing some of my work for me.

8 comments:

Ψ*Ψ said...

My instrumental analysis class was, um, non-traditional, I think. The prof covered the inner workings of the lab toys in fairly conceptual and handwavy terms, but spent much more time on which techniques were useful for what and why. She taught based on our interests, which (for most of the class) were biomedical-oriented. So we spent a fair amount of time on biosensors (which, um, are actually sorta cool) and useful concepts (such as FRET) that are ripe for exploitation in bioanalytical work. It would have been terribly dry and boring if anyone else had taught it, but she managed to convince every single one of us that we were really interested in analytical chemistry. Didn't realize until later how much I'd actually learned from the class until a while later when I was at a seminar that couldn't have been further from my area but made perfect sense anyway.

Be excitable. It is the only way to keep them awake for that subject.

Chemgeek said...

Thanks for the valuable insight.

I dabbled a bit with FRET in grad school. Kinda cool.

Malayang Mananaliksik said...

I like my Instrumental analysis class but, like most of my subjects, the scope is quite limited. It's best to expose students in analytical laboratory so that they can full understand the principles and appication of instruments. I have learned a lot in my job as an chemist in analytical laboratory.

But, I could recommend you this book below. I have the older version. I saw it few months ago. I belive, that there is a new edition.

Principles of Instrumental Analysis by Skoog, Nieman and Holler

I hope it could help!

Brian said...

I'm teaching IA for the first time in 6 years next spring. I agree with the need to be excitable. I would also recommend that you make active involvement in the class necessary, and not to try to cover everything in the book.

I've used Skoog and Rubinson and found both to be satisfactory references.

Anonymous said...

Is this a lecture or lab course?

I've TAed an instrumental lab a couple of times. We used "Chemistry Experiments for Instrumental Methods" by Sawyer, Heineman, and Beebe, but the text was really secondary to the instructor-supplied materials. The course focused mainly on how the instruments worked, and covered Electrochem, Atomic Absorption/Emission, Fluorescence, UV/Vis, GC, HPLC, calorimetry, and some other stuff.

Personally, I'd prefer an instrumental analysis course to cover all the typical organic stuff: NMR, IR, UV-Vis, Fluorescence, GC, HPLC, MS, optical rotation. If it's an organic-heavy course, then "Organic Structure Analysis" by Crews, Rodriguez, and Jaspars is an excellent text, and one of the few books from my undergrad days that still gets use.

Anonymous said...

Right. First explain what how it looks like when you actually make the analysis/takes the spectra - best done in front of the actual instrument. Then describe what is it good foor - ad then add fine details of inner workings.

The old classes we used to have in Prague were such a turnoff because some old fogey started writting equations and we never got to actually use the instrument for anything by ourselves (they were totems - the objects of veneration, deemed too valuable to students to work on them)

Bottling: Try the 2L polycarbonate soda bottles. The bottling is a lot faster and the beer serving size is about right for one sitting, too.

Chemgeek said...

Captain: This is essentially a lab class. Lecture will be done when necessary to teach the theory.

Milkshake: I have never used 2L bottles but have considered it. I'm worried about off flavors and whether the bottle can handle the potentially high pressure.

Anonymous said...

PET bottles can handle 100psi routinely, they tend to blow up above 150-160 psi. 7 atm = 100 psi should be plenty for a beer in-bottle carbonation. If you use a bottle after Coca-cola, all off-flavors should be extracted from the bottle already as cola is a much more corrosive liquid than beer.