The aim of this book is to provide a practical and affordable general lab manual for undergraduate Instrumental Analysis (IA) course.
After extensive experience in teaching IA laboratory course for a number of years, I have developed this lab manual in what I believe to be an improved version of an IA manual that is both concise and comprehensive.
The factors I consider most important for an IA manual to be effective in teaching are as follows: 1) the instruments covered in the manual should follow ACS guidelines, and reflect new advances in the field of IA, while also addressing industrial needs; 2) experiments in the manual should address the basic principles of the instruments and help the students to understand the fundamental concepts and mechanisms of the instruments; 3) the manual should facilitate the instructor to cover lab processes from both theoretical and operational perspectives; and 4) the lab manual should be affordable, and meet the needs of majority of today's undergraduate chemistry and other multi-disciplinary (e.
environmental science) programs.
This manual provides the core essentials for the most common instruments recommended by ACS guidelines as well as those used in a traditional chemistry program.
They are electrochemistry (Chapter 2), spectroscopy (Chapter 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), separation (Chapter 8, 9, 10).
Hyphenated techniques (GC/MS, LC/MS and ICP/MS) are also included in relevant chapters.
Traditional mass spectroscopy is not covered in separate experiments, but the basic principles are introduced in the experiments of the hyphenated techniques.
A separate chapter covering basic statistics is provided at the beginning of the manual (Chapter 1).
I strongly believe that some basic statistical principals and operations (e.
, linear regression) are critical for students to comprehend the course objectives, as it has become an ever-expanding and important aspect for IA courses.
This also provides some buffer period for the lecture session to.