Spectroscopy in a suitcase

On Tuesday 25th of March Cardiff University visited the school on behalf of the Royal Society of Chemistry to deliver a workshop on spectroscopy to the year 12 Chemistry pupils.  Spectroscopy forms an important part of the F322 AS module.  Dr Dayna Mason introduced the topic and got the pupils involved in interactive tasks to identify unknown organic compounds by using an infra-red spectrometer (a piece of equipment that they would only be able to use at university level) to test liquid samples.



Pupils testing samples on the IR-Spectrometer

The pupils compared their experimental findings with mass spectrogram results and databases to find their unknown organic compounds.

 

 

For more information on spectroscopy and 'spectroscopy in a suitcase' visit the RSC website - http://www.rsc.org/learn-chemistry/collections/spectroscopy