JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
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ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY AND THE COOPERATIVE PLAN JAMES F. CORWIN and A. R. WILSON Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio
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cooperative work-study program has long been recognized as a major factor in engineering and business administration education. The University of Cincinnati has had such a program operating since 1911. The University of Detroit has been running their Engineering College cooperative program since 1917. There has been little evidence of a concrete nature, however, t o show how well the cooperative work program supplements and implements a course in analytical chemistry. At Antioch College, where this type of cooperative program has been used since 1921 in a liberal arts institution, we have found that this program both supplements and extends the training in analytical chemistry usually required in college. Briefly, the pattern of this program is as follows. The chemistry course is five years in length. Usually, there is one year of full-time study (40 weeks); and four years of cooperative study (20 weeks of academic work, 26 weeks of actual work). Thismeans that the student, a t the end of his course, has two full years of experience, or approximately 4000 hours of industrial laboratory experience. Since i t is the policy to place the student on a job which is, in so far as possible, commensurate with his academic advancement, this means that, in many cases, he works in four different laboratory situations during his college career. I n
actual practice this is not always the case, since employers often wish t o retain the more advanced students in hopes of making them permanent employees. Since the student is not committed to stay with one employer for a period of more than six months the program attains a flexibility which works always to the advantage of the student. This is not to say that the student may not remain with one employer for a longer period of time, or even for his entire college course. It does, however, give him a bargaining power which allows him to obtain more advanced experience in line with his advanced academic standing, or to move t o a position with another employer where this experience may be gained. In other words, as the student advances in his knowledge of chemistry he is able to advance also in the TABLE 1 Yean in school 3
Number of students 4
4
17
5
9 4 34
6
Total Average number of years per student 4.3.
MAY, 1951 TABLE 4 Distribution of Volumetric Experience
TABLE 2 Field of interest
Numbm of students
Metallurgy Organic chemistry Teoh. librarian Biochemistry Analytical chemistry Phvsicd chemistrv himi is try teachi& Chemical engineermg Chemistry and business Tnoreania ohemistrv
Type of analvszs
3 8 1
Direct Indirect Oxidation and reduction Permaneanate Dichrogate Iodimetric Volumetric nrecinitation -
Volumetric Grsvimetric Colorimetric Instrumental Misoellaneous
Number per pwaa
Description
Number
Noninstrumental Does not include moisture and ash All types All types All types used for analysis
296
8.7
80 37 108
2.4 1.1 3.1 7.9
264 -
106 43 110 15 59 37
0.4 1.7 1.1
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Conductivity methods Titrimeters Polamgraph Snectrmhotometer
4 16 10 14
piI meter Refractometer Polarimeter Flame photometer Microscopevisual Microscopeeleetron
Total All types Min. reported by one person Mxr. renort,ed bv one oerson
responsibility and technical content of the job which he is performing under the cooperative work program. The records of 34 students were examined for the effect of this program on their experience in analytical chemistry. The survey was made when these students were registered for Quantitative Analysis 11, since this course is designed to complete or supplement each student's experience in analytical chemistry. .The course is usually taken during the fourth or fifth years, but some returned soldiers are allowed to substitute army experience for cooperative work and, because of this, registered for the course during the third year. On the other hand, some students, for financial reasons, had elected to spend six cooperative years in school rather than four with one full-time year. Table 1 shows the distribution between the number of students and years in school. The total number of jobs held by these students during their tenure prior to the survey was 96 with an average of 2.8 jobs per person. Table 2 is a classification of the students as to interest. The types of analytical experience arc classified in Table 3 under five general classifications common to analytical chemistry. These do not include repetitions of the same methods, sampling procedures, or standardizations. A breakdown of the three largest groups into subclassifications indicates the scope of the experiences and shows the type of methods commonly found in industry. These distributions are contained in Tables 4, 5, and 6. These summaries represent students interested in all phases of chemistry and their industrial positions are often thosc that do not include much analytical work. For thosc interested in analytical chemistry, Table 7 represents a typical series of job experiences. This survey shows that in general the cooperative
Number per vers~
TABLE 5 Distribution of Instrumental Analysis Number of students Type of instrument vAng instrument
TABLE 3 Type of analysts
Number
3 3 1
TABLE 6 Types of Miscellaneous Analyses Which Two or More Students Have Used Sieve andvsis Specific gravity Solubility Melt.inn noint, Viscosity Fractional distillation Membrane permeability Extraction Karl Fischer-moisture
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Softening point TurbidityBoiling point Iodine number Distillation k g e Water analysis Pyrometry Van Slyke-gas Dumas nitroplen
work program lends itself very well to training students in analytical chemistry and allows them to come in contact withmany methods and sampling procedures which are not available in the usual college course in analytical chemistry. I t allows them to use instrnments with which, normally, they would not come in contact until graduate school. The program lends itself especially well to those students interested in analytical chemistry as a career. TABLE 7 Year i n school 1
2 3
4 5
Courses taken durina year
Type of company
Inorg. chem., Full year in qual. and. school Quant. anal. I, Paint Mfg. Co. org. chem. I Org. chnm. I1 Pharmaceutical Co. Phys. cbem. I, Chemical Mfg. Co. quant. anal. Phys. chem. Same Chemical 11, adv. Mfg Co. anal. ohem.
Type of analytzeal wmk No job Control work, p h y s icd testing Analytical organic Control work on 90 ditIereut products Developing aualytical procedures
