5.311 is a 12 unit class (2-8-2) which introduces experimental chemistry for students who are majoring in Course V. See the Registrar's listing for the other administrative information. Principles and applications of chemical laboratory techniques, including preparation and analysis of chemical materials, measurement of pH, gas and liquid chromatography, visible-ultraviolet spectrophotometry, infrared spectroscopy, kinetics, data analysis, and elementary synthesis are taught. Enrollment is limited. Students gain experience in these areas by completing the four experiments detailed below.
Kinetics
This is an integrated experiment comprising topics from inorganic, organic, analytical, physical, and computational chemistry. It introduces the student to some of the basics of acquiring data pertaining to the kinetics of a chemical reaction, manipulating data to extract information such as reaction order and rate constants, and how to assess the catalytic effect of the reaction environment upon rate constants.
NMR
Unknown Aromatic Carboxylic Acid
This experiment involves the synthesis of a relatively simple covalent compound. In addition to teaching how to execute a reaction under an inert atmosphere, this experiment also introduces thin-layer chromatography as an analytical tool and column-chromatography as a means of purification.
The Preparation of Ferrocene and Acetylferrocene