The Organic Chemistry Laboratory

This book allows the interested participant to rapidly develop the skills needed to slice more deeply into organic chemistry than ever before. The attendant benefits are greater confidence and independence in acquired laboratory techniques. The happy result is that in a microscale-based organic chemistry laboratory, you are more likely to have a satisfying encounter with the experimental side of this fascinating field of knowledge. 

Research laboratories vary widely with respect to facilities and support given to safety. Large laboratories may have several hundred chemists and an extensive network of co-workers, supervisors, safety officers, and hazardous-waste managers. They also, according to government regulations, have an extensive set of safety procedures and detailed practices for the storage and disposal of hazardous wastes. In small laboratories, the individual chemist may have to take care of aU these aspects of safety. Some laboratories may routinely deal with very hazardous materials and may mn aU reactions in hoods. Others may deal mainly with relatively innocuous compounds and have very limited hood fadHties. 

We cannot revoke Murph/s law, but we can do a lot to minimize the damage. We can reduce the incidence of sparks and flames and flammable vapors. We can make sure that if the accident does occur, we have the means to contain the damage and to take care of any injuries that result. All of this means thinking about the laboratory environment. Does your laboratory have or enforce regulations related to important items such as eye, face, and foot protection, safety clothing, respiratory equipment, first aid supplies, fire equipment, spill kits, hoods, and compliance regulations Think ahead about what could go wrong and then plan and prepare to minimize the chance of an accident and be prepared to respond when one does occur. 

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The mechanical shaking machine is employed for auto matic mixing of heterogeneous systems and finds many applications in the organic chemistry laboratory. 

After a little experience in the organic chemistry laboratory, the student will soon find that the yields frequently do not approach the theoretical values. This may be due to one or more of the following causes —... 

Apart from a complete set of Beilstein s Handbuch and as many scientific journals with indexes as the Institution can aSFord, the following selected volumes are suggested as forming the nucleus of a small library for use in connexion with work in the organic chemistry laboratory. 

The organic chemistry laboratory is potentially one of the most dangerous of undergraduate laboratories. That is why you must have a set of safety guidelines. It is a very good idea to pay close attention to these rules, for one very good reason ... 

Distillation is one of the more important operations you will perform in the organic chemistry laboratory. It is important that you understand some of the physical principles going on during a distillation. Different systems require different treatments the explanations that follow parallel the classifications of distillations given earlier in the book. 

This book presents the basic techniques in the organic chemistry laboratory with the emphasis of doing the work correctly the first time. To this end, examples of what can go wrong are presented with admonishments, often bordering on the outrageous, to forestall the most common of errors. This is done in the belief that it is much more difficult to get into impossible experimental troubles once the student has been warned of the merely improbable ones. Complicated operations, such as distillation and extraction, are dealt with in a straightforward fashion, both in the explanations and in the sequential procedures. 

Tietze, L. F. Eicher, T. "Reaktionen und Synthesen im Org. Chem. Praktikum", Thieme Stuttgart, New York, 1981 p. 116 Tietze, L. F. Eicher, Th. Ringe, D., transl. "Reactions and Syntheses in the Organic Chemistry Laboratory", University Science Books Mill Valley, CA, 1989 p. 124. 

Physical data of solvents which are commonly used in the organic chemistry laboratory are tabulated in Appendix 5. 

The organic chemistry laboratory is an excellent place to learn and practice safety. Commonsense procedures practiced here also apply to other laboratories as well as the shop, kitchen, and studio. 

An example of this is an experiment developed by undergraduate researchers under the direction of Margaret Kerr at Worcester State College. The organic chemistry laboratory was using a bromination of alkenes experiment from the Doxsee and Hutchison laboratory manual (15). This... 

When performed in the organic chemistry laboratory, LLE is a preparative technique, performed manually and employing separatory funnels. When performed in the pharmaceutical analysis laboratory, LLE can be either preparative-scale (hundreds of milliliters), using a separatory funnel, or analytical-scale (microliters to a few milliliters) and performed using test tubes, vials, and glass or polypropylene pipets. 

Mohrig J R, Hammond C N, Colby D A (2007) On the successful use of inquiry-driven experiments in the organic chemistry laboratory. J Chem Educ 84(6) 992-998. 

Gaddis BA. Schoffstall AM (2007) Incorporating Guided-inquiry Learning into the Organic Chemistry Laboratory. J Chem Educ 84 848-851. 

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