Organic chemistry teaching laboratories

Ranke, J., Bahadir, M., Eissen, M., Konig, B. (2008) Developing and Disseminating NOP An Online, Open-Access, Organic Chemistry Teaching Resource to Integrate Sustainability Concepts in the Laboratory. Journal of Chemical Education, 85, 1000-1005. 

The traditional areas of wet chemistry came under very close scrutiny and it was felt that whilst the overall size of Part D could be justifiably reduced, the chapter on titrimetry required modification to include a section on titrations in non-aqueous solvents as these are of particular application to organic materials. It was also felt that environmentally important titrations such as those for dissolved oxygen and chemical oxygen demand should be introduced for the first time. By way of contrast to this we considered that gravimetry has greatly diminished in application and justified a substantial reduction in volume. This in no way undermines its importance in terms of teaching laboratory skills, but the original multitude of precipitations has been substantially pruned and experimental details abbreviated. 

Carothers was regarded as Illinois best organic chemistry student, equally good at physical chemistry, mathematics, physics, and laboratory techniques. Moreover, as Adams put it, Carothers was a lovable man. Despite his obvious talents, he was without artifice or pretense. Nevertheless, when Carothers savings ran out after a year, he had to leave Illinois to earn money teaching at the University of South Dakota, where the ever-faithful Pardee had arranged a position. 

Teaching Lab Kit (Fig. 3.5) This is a basic rotor for standard organic reactions allowing an introduction to microwave-mediated chemistry in teaching laboratories. It is designed for 16 x 20 mL glass vessels with operation limits of 1.5 bar and ca. 150 °C. 

Chemists shared the euphoria. When Roscoe succeeded Frankland in 1857, he established a chemistry department that became one of the leading departments in the country, with new buildings (1872) that included his own private laboratory, two teaching laboraories, and more than twenty small research laboratories and staff rooms. By 1887, the number of students in the department had reached 120, and the department had an honors program for the best of them. One of Roscoe s assistants, Schorlemmer, a student of Heinrich Will and Kopp, was the first chair holder in organic chemistry in Great Britain, at Manchester, in 1874. Roscoe and Schorlemmer s A Treatise on Chemistry (1877) became a classic textbook.69... 

By 1900, Dixon had succeeded Roscoe, and Perkin, Jr., had succeeded Schorlemmer. The Schorlemmer laboratory and the Perkin laboratory (named for Perkin, Jr., s father) provided facilities for organic teaching and research the Frankland and Dalton laboratories (originally built in 1872) were for undergraduates. The private library and laboratory of E. Schunck were bequeathed to the university and moved there from the moors of Kersal. The John Morley laboratory for organic chemistry was completed in 1909.70... 

The authors have striven to make the book something more than a collection of recipes. Owing to deficiencies in the teaching of the subject, there is to-day a tendency for the student to think that there is a lecture-room and a laboratory variety of organic chemistry. To such an extent does this division exist that a student who in the lecture-room knows the general method for the preparation of, say, anhydrides, in the laboratory is quite at sea when asked to prepare any anhydride other than that of acetic acid. To combat this, the preparations of several compounds of a given type have been included in most sections of the book. 

Reed, S. M. Hutchison, J. E. Green Chemistry in the Organic Teaching Laboratory An Environmentally Benign Synthesis of Adipic Acid , J. Chem. Educ. 2000, 77, 1627-1629. 

This chapter is dedicated to Professor Oskar Jeger from the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, in honor of his 7Sth birthday. Professor Jeger, called Oskar by his friends, was a master in the teaching and exploration of the chemistry of natural products. Oskar inspired many of us who later devoted their careers to this discipline. 

---