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Practical skills form the cornerstone of chemistry. However, the diversity of skills required in the laboratory means that a student’s experience may be limited. While some techniques do require specific skills, many of them are transferable generic skills that are required throughout the subject area. Limited time constraints of the modern curriculum often preclude or minimise laboratory time. 

Practical Skills in Chemistry 3^rd edition provides a general guidance for use in and out of practical sessions, covering a range of techniques from the basic to the more advanced.  This â€?one-stop’ text will guide you through the wide range of practical, analytical and data handling skills that you will need during your studies. It will also give you a solid grounding in wider transferable skills such as teamwork, using information technology, communicating information and study skills.

This edition has been enhanced and updated throughout to provide a complete and easy-to-read guide to the developing skills required from your first day through to graduation, further strengthening its reputation as the practical resource for students of chemistry and related discipline areas.

Practical Skills in Chemistry

Contents

List of boxes viii
Preface to the second edition xi
Guided tour xii
For the student xiv
Acknowledgements xv
List of abbreviations xvi

Study and examination skills
1. The importance of transferable skills
2. Managing your time
3. Working with others
4. Taking notes from lectures and texts
5. Learning and revising
6. Curriculum options, assessments and exams
7. Preparing your curriculum vitae

Information technology and library resources
8.  Finding and citing published information
9.  Evaluating information
10. Using online resources
11. Internet resources for chemistry
12. Using spreadsheets
13. Word processors, databases and other packages

Communicating information
14. Organising a poster display
15. Giving a spoken presentation
16. General aspects of scientific writing
17. Writing essays
18. Reporting practical and project work
19. Writing literature surveys and reviews

Fundamental laboratory techniques
20. Your approach to practical work
21. Health and safety
22. Working with liquids
23. Basic laboratory procedures I
24. Basic laboratory procedures II
25. Principles of solution chemistry
26. pH and buffer solutions

The investigative approach
27. Making and recording measurements
28. SI units and their use
29. Scientific method and design of experiments
30. Project work

Laboratory techniques
31. Melting points
32. Recrystallisation
33. Solvent extraction
34. Distillation
35. Reflux
36. Evaporation
37. Inert atmosphere methods
38. Combinatorial chemistry

Classical techniques
39. Qualitative techniques for inorganic analysis
40. Gravimetry
41. Procedures in volumetric analysis
42. Acid–base titrations
43. Complexometric titrations
44. Redox titrations
45. Precipitation titrations

Instrumental techniques
46. Fundamental principles of quantitative chemical analysis
47. Calibration and quantitative analysis
48. Basic spectroscopy
49. Atomic spectroscopy
50. X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy
51. Chromatography – basic principles
52. Gas and liquid chromatography
53. Electrophoresis
54. Electroanalytical techniques
55. Radioactive isotopes and their uses
56. Infrared spectroscopy
57. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy
58. Mass spectrometry
59. Thermal analysis

Analysis and presentation of data
60. Using graphs
61. Presenting data in tables

62. Hints for solving numerical problems
63. Descriptive statistics
64. Choosing and using statistical tests
65. Drawing chemical structures
66. Chemometrics
67. Computational chemistry

Answers to study exercises
Index