Guided-inquiry-based design and construction of instrumentation in the analytical curriculum

CHED 1798

Dan Sykes, dgs12@psu.edu, Department of Chemistry, Penn State University, 325 Whitmore Lab, University Park, PA 16802
In order to increase student interest in electronics and promote an appreciation for the practical applications of electronics in chemistry, electronics-based research projects were introduced into the instrumental analysis curriculum. The projects require the students to build, from scratch, calibrated and quantitative instruments. Past and current projects include the design and construction of a static solid-state deuterium NMR probe, a diamond-anvil cell, gated-fluorimeter, barcode scanner, GC-FID, ion chromatography instrument, dissolved oxygen probe, cyclic voltammetry instrument, DNA oligomer sensor, capillary electrophoresis on-a-chip, UV-vis grating-based photodiode array spectrometer and a temperature-gradient electrophoresis apparatus. In addition to the design and construction of the instruments, students are required to develop one or more instructional exercises that provide a useful and effective introduction to the theory and operation of the instrumental technique and the relevance of the experimental measurements to chemical systems. With the exception of the NMR probes and diamond-anvil cells, all of the above instruments cost less than one hundred dollars each to build.