We currently have a system where first semester organic chemistry lecture and laboratory is counted as one 5 credit course. The lab is considered to account for one of those five credits. As a result, the lab grade is worth 20% of the course grade. In many schools, organic chemistry lecture is a separate course [...]
The 2009 meeting of the Midwest Association for Chemistry Teachers at Liberal Arts Colleges (MACTLAC) was held at Hope College. The theme this year was “Integration of Research into Teaching: Improving Learning Through Research.” Plenary sessions were led by Lorna Jarvis (Hope), Nancy Kerner (U of MI), and Don Wink (UIC). Of most interest to [...]
Last week Dominican University hosted a Summer Undergraduate Research Experience for community college sophomores who wanted a week-long assortment laboratory experiences. For my part, we did an analysis of energy drinks. This experiment was adapted from the “caffeine extraction” sophomore organic chemistry laboratory sequence. First, we did a colorimetric array for each of 6 [...]
All of us would agree that exposing students to routine organic chemistry analytic instruments is an important part of Organic Chemistry laboratory. However, instrument use by the students gets more problematic as student population grows. 1a) Ideally, students would run their own analysis (with appropriate supervision) as part of the experiment just like they do [...]
A recent article in “The Teaching Professor” (August-September 2008 ) entitled “Poorly Designed Group Work” caught my eye this past month. Basically, the author says that many undergraduate group projects are not designed to be successful learning experiences. At some schools, group work in pairs (or larger groups) in chemistry laboratory sections is quite routine. Sometimes an [...]
Data analysis will play a larger role in the new collaborative Organic Chemistry curriculum. I performed three experiments Fall 2007 where students entered their data before leaving the lab. The students were then directed to analyze the “class data” as part of their lab report. This is typically not done in traditional experiments for unknown [...]
1) Source(s) This lab was developed by a team of students from a recent JCE article: “Synthesis of Chemiluminescent Esters: A Combinatorial Synthesis Experiment for Organic Chemistry Students,” Duarte, Robert; Nielsen, Janne T.; Dragojlovic, Veljko. J. Chem. Educ. 2004, 81, 1010. A good resource for this experiment is a website: “Chemiluminescence of Oxalate Esters” http://www.chem.leeds.ac.uk/delights/texts/VV_exp_26.htm
2) [...]
This experiment was adapted by a group of 4 students from: Lehman, J. W., Lehman, J. W., Operational organic chemistry, & 3rd. (2004). Microscale operational organic chemistry : A problem-solving approach to the laboratory course. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Prentice Hall. This was an interesting find, I thought. I have done a couple [...]
Oxidation of Cinnamyl Alcohol using Pyridinium Chlorochromate:
1) Source(s)
Experiment #14 in Mohrig, J. R. “Modern projects and experiments in organic chemistry: Miniscale and standard taper microscale.” (2003) New York; Basingstoke: W.H. Freeman; Palgrave Macmillan.
2) Changes to published procedure
○We did not visualize the TLC with p-anisaldehyde.
○We did not pre-mix the PCC, NaOAc, and molecular sieves.
○We stopped the [...]
Don’t Repeat Yourself, “DRY” may be central tenet of computer programming doctrine, but is it not part of the chemist’s credo. Scientists spend a significant amount of time repeating procedures and even experiments in the quest to push back the frontiers of human knowledge. If we want to create and discover new knowledge, why do [...]
