Improvement of Chemistry Laboratories with FTIR Spectroscopy

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This project is designed to enhance the laboratory learning experience in courses populated by chemistry, biology, and pre- professional majors. Using the requested Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer (FTIR) in several laboratories (organic, instrumental, physical, biochemistry, and research), students discover molecular and quantitative information about diverse chemical substances. Several innovative experiments to enhance student learning result in the discovery of the relationship between hydrogen bonding and physical state and hydrogen bond strength and electronegativity; measurement of bond distances from rotational energies and bond dissociation energies from overtone spectra; qualitative and quantitative analysis of environmental samples; and examination of changes in protein and nucleic acid secondary structure. The FTIR also facilitates an ongoing research project to determine pesticide persistence in environmental matrices. Through use of the FTIR in successive laboratories, students headed for graduate study or the environmental workforce are well prepared for the research and testing applications of academic, industrial, private, and governmental laboratories.