Chemical Education Today edited by
Michelle M. Bushey Trinity University San Antonio, TX 78212
Introduction to a New Column: Instrumentation Topics for the Teaching Laboratory Michelle M. Bushey Department of Chemistry, Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas 78212
[email protected] Think back to when you were a student. No doubt the tools and instruments you use to accomplish your chemical tasks now are not all exactly the same ones that you trained on then. We can safely assume that your students will find themselves learning new techniques and new instruments after they leave your tutelage. As chemical educators, we want to give our students as accurate and as current a view of the chemical landscape as possible. By making our students and ourselves aware of the newest tools and instruments, we make them and ourselves more effective and powerful chemists.
This Column's Focus
Keeping Current in Chemical Instrumentation Staying ahead of the instrument curve is not easy. So, would it not be useful to have a resource that alerted you to areas and techniques of instrumentation worth watching? Perhaps you would like to learn about instruments that your current students and future career chemists are likely to use regularly but have not yet entered the standard chemistry curriculum. Or, maybe you have heard of an instrument making its way into the curriculum, but you are not yet certain how it might apply to the courses you teach. Maybe some new tools are available that, if adopted in the curriculum, would lead to more efficient use of the limited instructional time we have with our students. And, at some point, you might have to make a tough decision: Should you spend limited resources replacing a 30-year-old, centrally important piece of equipment or should you invest in a new technology that seems promising but is of uncertain long-term importance? Introducing a New Column on Instrumentation It would be useful to have a resource that responds to these issues and questions;and that is what I hope this new column will provide. Welcome to Instrumentation Topics for the Teaching Laboratory. I am Michelle M. Bushey, analytical chemist and professor at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. I've been at Trinity since 1990 and have been a reader of this Journal even before then. The Journal has a long history of addressing issues related to chemical instrumentation, and I am excited to become a part of this long and useful tradition. The Journal is often the first place I turn to when developing a new lab on an existing instrument or writing a grant proposal to acquire a new instrument. I often already have an idea and instrument in mind, so I search the Journal for examples of what has already been developed for instructional laboratories with particular instruments. But it can be difficult to keep pace with the fantastic and exciting developments in instrumentation.
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It can be particularly hard to know when these developments have successfully leapt from the research lab to the instrument manufacturing production line and then again into the instructional chemistry lab. This is especially true for instrumentation topics outside my area of expertise; I suspect this is so for many of you as well. It is my hope that this column will be a place you can turn to when making decisions about what types of chemical instruments and tools to acquire for your students.
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This column will address aspects of instrumentation as they relate to the teaching of chemistry at the college level, although high school teachers will also find some of the content useful. Submissions to this column should include information that answers these questions:
• What is the instrument? (Address the nonexpert reader.) • Why should the instrument be (or why has it been) incorporated in the curriculum? • How can the instrument be incorporated effectively in the curriculum? • Where can someone obtain this instrument, or find more information?
This column is not the forum for peer-reviewed articles on newly designed experiments. It is also not meant to replace such articles: By all means, keep on submitting them to the Journal. Instead, think of this column as an “instrumentation (movie) trailer”;a place where you can glimpse upcoming trends and learn about exciting new developments in instructional lab instrumentation. It will provide advance information to those of us who may then start thinking about adopting particular instruments. That thinking may in turn lead to grant proposals and full-length papers. Over the next few months you will see columns on the migration of microwave ovens from the kitchen into the chemistry lab; how a portable XRF can link chemistry with several other disciplines; and why your students should start referring to UPLC rather than HPLC. Still other contributions might address topics in computer simulations and resources that are useful when particular instruments are absent from your repertoire. Perhaps some of you have ideas about how instrumentation typically seen in upper-division courses and laboratories can be successfully moved into the first two years. Some columns might address how simple accessories and unconventional strategies can breathe new life into familiar tools. Still others will offer report information from funding agencies
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Vol. 87 No. 1 January 2010 pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc r 2009 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc. 10.1021/ed800027n Published on Web 12/18/2009
Chemical Education Today
and provide tips for grant-writing success for instrumentation purchases. Contributing to the Column Do you have some good ideas? Please contribute them to these columns: I certainly did not sign up to write all of these myself! Send your ideas, ideally in the form of a 150-word abstract, to
[email protected]. Columns should bring to light a practice related to instrumentation likely to become more common in the instructional laboratories or perhaps feature a new and exciting instrument development. Each column should answer this fundamental question: How might the adoption and use of this instrumentation or approach further the practices and
r 2009 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
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goals of chemical education? Published columns will be between 800 and 1600 words and will ideally include one or more graphical images and photographs. Abstracts can be submitted any time, although earlier is better. Potential authors will be notified by one of four dates (February 2, May 5, August 5, and November 5, 2010) as to whether their topic has been accepted for development into a column for which draft deadlines will follow roughly one month later. All final materials will be submitted through the Journal's submission portal, Paragon Plus. I look forward to your contributions and to disseminating current, useful information on incorporating innovative instrumentation in the chemistry laboratory curriculum.
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