SUITCASE SPECTROSCOPY

On Tuesday 31st January, A Level chemists had the opportunity to see spectrometry in action. As part of our A Level course, we have been learning about analytical techniques in organic chemistry including mass spectrometry, NMR spectroscopy and infra-red spectroscopy.

We were delighted to welcome Dr Frank Mair from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Manchester to give us a workshop with his spectroscopy in a suitcase equipment. It was surprising to see a sleek touchscreen device as many of the traditional equipment involves huge machinery and requires ladders to even reach it. We were given several complex spectra to analyse and had to identify the unknown compound. Finally, at the end of the workshop Dr Mair went into further detail about how the machine actually works, going into the theory of spin-spin coupling, some of which was complicated but nonetheless very interesting to learn about.