In the Classroom
Advanced Chemistry Classroom and Laboratory
edited by
Joseph J. BelBruno Dartmouth College Hanover, NH 03755
Students Select an Instrument at the Pittsburgh Conference R. J. Eierman Department of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, Eau Claire, WI 54702
The excitement of attending a large national conference is familiar to most professionals. Conferences provide an opportunity to see and meet the leaders in various fields and to hear lectures and see demonstrations about the latest developments. Of course, visiting a large metropolis and its convention center and rubbing elbows with many others with common interests are an important part of the experience, too. When the 1996 Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy (PittCon) came to Chicago, about a five-hour car ride away, it seemed a golden opportunity to provide students in Instrumental Analysis the experience of a large national conference (1, 2). The only way for a student to truly understand such a conference is to attend one. A rewarding conference experience is one in which the attendee has a goal or purpose that is fulfilled by one or more aspects of the conference. Without a focus, the experience of attending a conference is not as fulfilling as possible. A recent article in this Journal reports a quantitative analysis assignment based on the literature associated with PittCon (3). This article describes an assignment that students were given to work on before, during, and after a visit to PittCon, which helped make the trip a true professional expedition rather than just a diversion from the routine of classroom and laboratory course work. The assignment was to design a chemical analysis experiment and to select an instrument to be used in the experiment. The goal of this assignment was to give students experience in investigating and planning an analysis experiment, particularly the details of the instrumentation. In the process, students would become familiar with sources of information on chemical instrumentation and methods of accessing those sources. The assignment also provided a focus for the activities of students during the visit to PittCon. An Overview of the Course and the Assignment The course, Chem 462, Instrumental Analysis, has three hours of lecture and one three-hour laboratory per week and has Physical Chemistry as a prerequisite. The student clientele consists of ACS Chemistry majors in their junior and senior years and the class size varies between four and twelve. The course goals are to help students learn the concepts, instrumentation, and methods of analytical chemistry including electronics, spectrometry, electrochemistry and chromatography. The laboratory consists of a series of instrumental analyses often done in cooperative, role-playing groups (4) with the analyses centered around a common theme (e.g., analysis of groundwater collected from sampling wells on the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire [UWEC] campus) (5).
As described in the student handout (see Box on next page), the assignment consisted of proposing a project and the instrumentation needed to do it, investigating the possible instruments at PittCon, and presenting final oral and written reports on the instrument chosen and the justification for it. Notice that the creation of a budget required that they investigate the instrument, including add-ons and consumable supplies and reagents needed for one year of instrument operation. Observations The proposal stage of the assignment was done before the trip to PittCon. Students chose a wide range of instruments to investigate (Flame AAS, FTIR, capillary electrophoresis, GCMS, LCMS ICP/Emission Spectrometry, ICPMS, solid-state NMR) and the initial budgets ranged from $30,000 to $750,000. The instruments selected were ones students were interested in owing to course work or research projects. Much of the original information came from students accessing the home pages of instrument vendors on the World Wide Web. This was an excellent introduction to the Web as a source of up-to-date information that would have been more difficult and much more time consuming to obtain in other ways. Several students also made telephone contacts during this phase and were mailed information on instruments and prices. The proposal forced students to consider issues associated with instrument usage that they had not confronted before but that they will encounter in the research environment. Comparing instrument features and capabilities is difficult and establishing budgets for equipment and consumables is very challenging. Students came to some realization of the actual costs associated with modern chemical analysis during this exercise. The proposals were reviewed, graded, and returned before the students left for PittCon. The trip to PittCon was the highlight of the project and indeed the entire course. Eight students and two faculty members drove to Chicago, arriving before noon on Monday. The afternoon was spent visiting the exposition and lectures, with groups forming and breaking up as interests dictated. Tuesday morning was also spent at the conference. In the afternoon the group headed to a local research facility (Searle, Inc.) for a tour presented by two UWEC graduates. After that the group headed home, arriving before midnight. The total cost of the trip, without meals (which were paid for by the group members), was about $500 ($200 for lodging, $200 for registration, and $100 for transportation). Students had varying levels of success gathering information at the exposition. A preliminary program including
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In the Classroom
a map of the exposition was given to them before the trip to provide the opportunity to plan their activities. Engaging a vendor in a meaningful conversation that nets some viable information requires understanding and confidence. The early part of the week at PittCon is very busy, so students had to successfully compete with other customers for the attention of vendors. Some vendors were very gracious and provided useful information in a professional manner. A few were not helpful, and one student was snubbed by a vendor too busy to deal with an undergraduate. There was much conversation on the drive down about the strategies necessary to get information. On the drive back, talk centered about what worked, what didn’t, and the treatment the students received from various vendors. Several students also attended lectures by users or vendors of the instrumentation in which they were interested. These talks did not have as much impact as it was thought they might, perhaps because students found it difficult to identify talks
that contained desired content at a level they could deal with. One student, though, was the sole attendee at a lecture given by a vendor of the instrument in which he was interested. This resulted in a wonderful experience in which the student was given a full-blown demonstration of the instrument’s capabilities, with a great deal of opportunity to ask questions with the full attention of the vendors. Although the visit to the conference was relatively short (about 24 hours), it was long enough to permit students to experience a national meeting in a large city. The assignment gave a focus to the conference that would not otherwise have been there for some of the students, and the students had enough time to get their information but not so much that they wasted time. One night in Chicago was sufficient to get a good meal (German), see a few sights—including a couple of hot-spots for those who were 21 years old (e.g., Hard Rock Cafe), and sleep in a high-rise hotel. The visit to Searle was an excellent introduction to an industrial analytical lab, and
Instrumental Analysis Proposal The Chem 462 class will be in Chicago for the Pittsburgh Conference on Monday and Tuesday, March 4 and 5. This experience will include the opportunity to visit the exposition at PittCon at which there is an unbelievable array of chemical instrumentation displayed. In order to focus your efforts during the exposition visit I am making the following assignment, which will also take the place of the laboratory session we are missing. In this project you will design an analytical chemistry research project or (teaching) laboratory experiment that utilizes a piece of modern analytical instrumentation. You will submit a proposal describing the project before we go to Chicago and then you will investigate the available instrumentation during the conference. Finally you will report back to the class on your proposed project and the type of instrument you have chosen to carry it out after we get back. Submit a two page proposal to me by Feb. 27, 1996 including: 1. The analyte(s) and the sample(s) to be analyzed. 2. Description of the analytical procedure to be used. 3. Instrumentation required including all add-ons (autosamplers, data stations, etc.) 4. A tentative budget including: a. Itemized instrument cost. b. Supply and reagent costs for one year (e.g. gases and other consumables) You are free to consult with faculty, friends or colleagues (including me) as you begin to think of ideas. I would like to have a title of your project submitted to me by Tuesday Feb. 16. I am hoping that each student will come up with a different instrument, but it may be that there will be some overlap. I will not put any limits on the budget so you are free to think big along those lines. You may need to consult instrument vendors for prices for your tentative budgets (i.e. before we go to PittCon). An excellent way to do that is on the world wide web at URL “http://www.shef.ac.uk/~chem/chemdex/chem-commercial.html” under USA. Companies such as Beckman, Hewlett-Packard, Perkin Elmer and Varian have a range of instrumentation that they supply. Choose a representative instrument with the add-ons you want and call their 800 number to get prices. During the conference I will ask that you visit as many vendors as you can find who make the type of instrument you’re after. Collect as much information as possible regarding the capabilities and prices of the instrumentation. In addition get a description of laboratory requirements for the instrument (e.g. 3 phase power, cooling water and drain, compressed air, hood, etc.). If possible attend some talks or a symposium about your technique, too. You will then do a comparison of at least the best two models for inclusion in your presentation to the class. You should compare features, capabilities, figures of merit, cost, service (warrantees) and anything else you deem important. I understand that your increased knowledge of the instrumentation at the conference may change your proposal and that is acceptable as long as your final budget does not exceed 150% of the original. I will communicate more information about the format of the post-conference presentations in the future. This project will be graded based on the completeness of the proposal, the quality of the information gathered at the conference, the comparison of the instrument models and the organization and completeness of the presentation. The project will be worth about one lab write-up, i.e. 20 to 25 points.
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some of the instruments seen at the conference were observed in their actual work setting in that laboratory. Each student was asked to create two products to complete the instrumental selection project. The first was to fill in a one-page summary form that asked for three concise descriptions: first, of the instrument they proposed; second, of the instrument they chose; and third, of an instrument they decided against. The descriptions included the instrument name and the analyte and sample to be investigated. They also included a list of the instrument components, add-ons, and data system, with the associated costs for each and a total. Students were asked to make brief comments on the selected instrument and also on the instrument not selected. The second product was a 10-minute talk presented to the class, summarizing the selection process. The length of the talk was chosen to keep the comments brief and focused and so all students could give their talks in a single 75-minute period. The talks were evaluated on a grading sheet using criteria that were discussed with the students ahead of time. The presentations were quite good. The students had no trouble locating several possible instruments and all were able to gather adequate information to permit a valid comparison. Some of the comparisons were not particularly well done. Several students understandably had trouble deciding what aspects of the instrument or data system would actually be important to consider. These deficiencies were exposed during questions after the presentation. All were able to stay close to the budget that they originally proposed except for the solid-state NMR student, who decided that the only way to house such an instrument appropriately would be to build a new building at a cost far beyond the proposed budget. The total project grade was split into three parts, the proposal, the summary sheet and the presentation. One problem that arose was that despite a two-week delay between the conference and the presentations, some students had not received the information that they requested at PittCon. Vendors mail most of their information rather than hand it out at the conference, and those who were slow with the mailing did not get the information out in time to be considered in the decision and presentation. Another drawback of the project was that students did not attend the talks at the conference. This was primarily due to the short time period and the assignment. However, this significant part of the national conference was not appreciated by the students during or after the trip. The student response to the visit to PittCon and the instrument selection process were overwhelmingly positive. Students commented that they were energized by what was typically their first visit to a national conference. The project gave them a purpose as they made their way through the enormous exposition. They researched and came to know what was available in the type of instrument they chose. The project
also helped them understand the actual costs associated with instrumental analyses. Students took their information gathering seriously, which meant that this academic, role-playing exercise took on the feel of a real instrument selection. In fact, one student who had a part-time job at a local industrial laboratory investigated an instrument (flame atomic absorption spectrometer) that was being considered for purchase by the company. Several students commented on the value of the conference visit in the final course evaluation, and one student commented favorably on the trip and project almost two years later. An assignment of this sort could be carried out in a variety of courses without the trip, although this would reduce the excitement. Most national conferences (ACS, FACCS, PittCon, etc.) publish a variety of literature that could be used as a focus for an assignment in courses in any subdivision of chemistry or biochemistry. As Web sites are developed, students will be able to access much information before, during and after such a conference, too. Although this sort of trip and assignment have not been repeated (I have not taught the course since), the intention is to work some variation on this task into the instrumental analysis course in the future. Conclusion The use of an instrument selection assignment to augment the experience of visiting a national conference was very successful. Students were given a focus and an opportunity to learn and grow in a professional setting. Some very practical lessons regarding instrumental analysis were learned and the experience was more exciting and fulfilling than it would have been in the absence of such an assignment. The trip consumed two full days, and one lecture and one laboratory period were forfeited. The oral presentations consumed another lecture period. However, the instructor and most of the students agree that this trip and assignment were the highlight of the entire course. Acknowledgments Funds for the trip to the 1996 Pittsburgh Conference were provided from the Research Corporation Departmental Development Grant. I also thank Craig Bender and Michael Witkiewicz for providing the tour of the analytical laboratory at Searle, Inc. Literature Cited 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Settle, F. J. Chem. Educ. 1991, 68, A37. Wainwright, R. Anal. Chem. 1996, 68, 86A. Mabrouk, P. A. J. Chem. Educ. 1996, 73, A23. Walters, J. P. J. Chem. Educ. 1991, 63, 977A, 1077A, 1179A. Hughes, K. D. Anal. Chem. 1993, 65, 883A.
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