Report D. J. Leggett Department of Chemistry, University of Houston, Houston, Tex. 77004
The Undergraduate Instrumental Analysis Course A Survey of Available Equipment It is axiomatic that an undergraduate laboratory course teaching instrumental analysis requires a wide range of appropriate instrumentation. Ideally, these instruments should be dedicated to the course, though financial considerations often demand that some of the techniques be demonstrated using departmental equipment. Recently, the chemistry department at the University of Houston embarked upon a process of upgrading its instrumental laboratory course. As the
first step in this process, a survey was conducted of selected American universities, to ascertain the level of instrumental support for this type of course. The results of the survey are presented in this REPORT. One hundred ten universities, chosen randomly, were selected from the "Directory of Graduate Research" (1). Forty-one replies were received. Each respondent was asked the approximate age and cost of the instrument(s) used in three major areas: separations, spectroscopy, and electroanalysis. These areas were further divided into: GC, high performance LC, and other chromatographic techniques; atomic absorption, UV-visible, atomic emission, fluorescence, infrared, NMR, mass, and other spectrometry; and potentiometry (pH, ion-selective, metal electrodes), conductometry, electrogravimetry, coulometry, polarography, and other electroanalytical techniques. Respondents were also asked to indicate whether each piece of equipment was dedicated to the undergraduate course or was departmental research instrumentation.
ter view of the situation. Fifty percent of the universities surveyed dedicate 85% or more of the total available equipment to the undergraduate course. The average age of the dedicated equipment is 8.0 years. The histogram, Figure 2, shows there is a normal distribution about the mean. It may be inferred from these responses that the full impact of microcomputer-controlled instrumentation has yet to be felt in U.S. undergraduate instrumentation laboratories.
A v a i l a b i l i t y a n d A g e of E q u i p m e n t
0
20
40
60
80
100
Percentage Figure 1 . P e r c e n t a g e of total a v a i l a b l e e q u i p m e n t d e d i c a t e d to t h e u n d e r g r a d uate laboratory 0003-2700/81 /0351-271 A$01.00/0 © 1981 American Chemical Society
Just over 75% of the equipment reported was dedicated to the instrumentation course. A few universities noted that some of the equipment was also used by other junior and/or senior laboratory courses. This average is survey-wide and does not truly reflect the extent to which each university provides equipment for the undergraduate course. Figure 1 gives a bet-
2
4
6
8
10
12 14
Age (years) Figure 2 . A g e distribution of e q u i p m e n t d e d i c a t e d t o t h e undergraduate l a b o r a tory
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 53, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 1981 · 271 A
Ο
20
40 60 Percentage
80
100
0
20
40 60 80 Percentage
100
0
20
40 eu tsu Percentage
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Figure 3. Percentage of undergraduate dedicated equipment devoted to separations
Figure 4. Percentage of undergraduate dedicated equipment devoted to spectrometry
Figure 5. Percentage of undergraduate dedicated equipment devoted to electroànalysis
Areas of Study
reflect the relatively high cost of spectrometric compared to electroanalytical instrumentation. It is also seen, from Table I, that departmental equipment is used most frequently for spectroscopic experiments. An attempt was made to correlate the number of students graduated from ACS-certified programs during 1977 to 1979 (2) with total funds committed by each university, inclusive of departmental equipment. There was no discernible relationship. However, if the funds per student for each university are considered, a pattern does emerge. The funds per student are calculated by dividing the total amount
of devoted funds by the number of students graduated, over the period 1977 to 1979. The resulting data are arranged into four groups based upon the number of students. The results are shown in Table II. The smallest schools (1-20 students) have the larg est capital investment per student, but also show the greatest variability in the direction of funding. The sec ond group (21-40) and the largest (61 and above) are quite similar in the level of funding per student. The third group (41-60) has a significantly lower level of support per student, for the data reported. Inspection of the data also reveal that, by and large, the smaller schools have a wider variety of equipment and devote more funds toward this undergraduate course than do the larger schools. In this con text "larger" and "smaller" refer to the number of ACS-certified BS grad uates. The author is indebted to the indi viduals at the 42 schools who re sponded to the survey. Copies of-the complete survey results, without uni versity affiliation, are available from the author upon request.
The histograms shown in Figures 3, 4, and 5 indicate the percentage of all equipment devoted to the three major areas of study. The survey did not provide any information concerning the number of experiments performed on any one piece of equipment. However, 50-60% of all available equipment is devoted to spectroscopy, 3040% of the equipment is electroanalytically oriented, and only 10-20% is devoted to separations. Table I provides details of the average funds devoted per piece of equipment in each major area. The figures are as expected, and
Table I. Average Level of Funding for Instrumentation Undergraduate and departmental Undergraduate only Departmental only
All Equipment
Separations
Spectrometry
$10 478 (585)'
$9 728 (95)
$14810 (311)
Electroanalytlcal
$3348 (179)
$6 484 (445)
$6 625 (75)
$9 042 (203)
$3310 (167)
$23 171 (140)
$21 365 (20)
$25 651 (108)
$3867 (12)
" Numbers in parentheses indicate number of pieces of equipment in each category.
References
Table II. Funding per Graduating Student Compared to Size of Graduating Class 1977-79 Number of Cases, Ν
Average b for Group
1-20
19
$19 203
21-40
11
41-60
5
61-103
6
Group
1 a c
8
Spread in Capital Investment per Student 0
Total Number of Students
$ 2 7 3 3 ( 1 5 ) - $ 7 4 420(5)
200
$3 532
$478 (38)-$6361 (36)
338
$1 894
$523 (59)-$3395 (49)
258
$3 441
$743 (97)-$7749 (64)
473
Number of ACS-certified BS graduates, 1977-79. Average of (Total Funds)/(Number of BS degrees awarded), 1977-79, for each group. Numbers in brackets are BSs awarded for low and high per-student fund levels.
(1) "Directory of Graduate Research, 1979," American Chemical Society, Washington, D.C., 1979. (2) Chemical and Engineering News, 57 (18), 54 (1979); and 58 (16), 60 (1980).
D. J. Leggett is assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Hous ton. He earned a Grad. R.I.C. degree in 1969, and a PhD from the Univer sity of Waterloo (Canada) in 1973. His research interests include micro computer control and software devel opment for solution equilibria, and flow injection analysis.
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 53, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 1981 · 273 A
