Salzberg Chemistry Seminar
Speaker: Professor Dan Sykes, Associate Head for Undergraduate Education The Pennsylvania State University
Topic: "Student-centered design and Construction of "home-built" instrumentation in the analytical chemistry curriculum."
 

ABSTRACT:

A student with sights set towards a career in the chemical sciences must possess a basic knowledge of chemistry as well as have an advanced exposure to the technology used to probe chemical systems. Unfortunately, the ability of many programs to maintain and improve the quality of their educational resources is compromised because of the increasing costs to maintain instructional facilities and the shrinking nature of funding sources. Further, commercial instruments are becoming increasingly more sophisticated and user interfaces more simple leading many of us to believe the primary objective is to know how to “insert” a sample and learn the software.  Instruments have very much become “black boxes” and students are unable to appreciate the practical limitations that influence instrument design and data acquisition, and therefore, never question the significance or quality of the data. Our group focuses on developing rugged, low-cost Small, Mobile Instruments for Laboratory Enhancement that could be easily constructed by students and provide a peek inside the “black box”.  Students work on several modular-based laboratory investigations and a semester-long research project. Projects include the design and construction of a static solid-state deuterium NMR probe, a diamond-anvil cell, fluorimeter, GC-FID, dissolved oxygen probe, cyclic voltammetry instrument, UV-vis grating-based photodiode array spectrometer and a temperature-gradient electrophoresis apparatus, among others. The projects have become a positive life-defining experience for our students.

Host: Issa Salame (isalame@ccny.cuny.edu)