CHEMISTRY LAB

Aims:

 To gain practical experience of some of the most important techniques and procedures in preparative organic and analytical chemistry. To be able to successfully carry out a preparation, isolate, purify and fully characterize the product by physical and spectroscopic methods and make a comprehensive written report of the work.

Objectives:

1. To teach students basic chemical laboratory techniques, in particular best practices in lab safety.

2. To help student learn to apply fundamental chemical concepts in solving chemical problems in the laboratory.

Approach:

The school provides an introduction to basic laboratory experiments and techniques in the areas of colligative properties, gas laws, calorimetry, kinetics, equilibrium, quantitative analysis, electrochemistry, and spectroscopy with its well equipped infrastructures and necessary Lab ware and reagents.

Students bring the lab manual, lab notebook, and a scientific calculator to lab for each meeting. Students study the lab procedure for that week in advance and write a “pre-lab” as detailed by the teacher. Preparedness for lab is evaluated via a quiz administered at the beginning of each meeting. Following the quiz, the instructor discusses the chemical and physical concepts behind the lab session. The students then execute the lab procedure, working in pairs. Observations and data is recorded in the notebook. Complete lab entries are written based on the data collected. A complete lab notebook entry also includes pre-lab and post-lab questions from the textbook for that experiment.