Description.The goal of the General Chemistry Lab is to provide students with "hands-on" experience in chemistry. The focus will be on chemistry as a skill, much like woodworking is a skill, i.e.,  to be competent and creative, the practioner needs a solid foundation in the basic tools of the trade. In chemistry, the tools include both classical "wet" techniques, such as titrations, and modern instrumentation and computer data analysis. Over the course of the summer, my goal is to provide students with broad coverage of these facets of the chemical laboratory. Many of the experiments are analytical in nature, that is, the emphasis will be on learning and applying proper technique to mimimize experimental error and bias in the results.
 

Notebook Requirement.  You will be required to keep a permanent, bound laboratory notebook for recording experimental measurements and observations. A regular composition notebook will be satisfactory, provided the pages are not perforated. Keep the first four pages blank to leave room for table of contents (which you will keep up-to-date).  Write page numbers in your book to help organize your work.

The goal of your book is to give yourself and others the ability to read and understand your work. This means that you should enter data in well-labeled tables, use complete sentences when recording observations and explain all entries clearly.

The following points should be kept in mind as you use your notebook:

•  Date and initial your notebook each day that you work in the laboratory as well as any day that you make entries in the notebook (such as when you do calculations etc).
• Use a descriptive title and start a new page when you begin work on a new experiment.
•  Always make entries directly into your book - never write data on loose sheets to be transcribed later in neater form.
• Always use a ballpoint pen. When you need to make a correction,  put a line through any entry you would like to change and date and initial all changes that you make.

Schedule. The tentative laboratory schedule is below. Note that each experiment is linked to a more complete description.
 

Date:	Experiment Title
June 26	Lab Safety and Cycle of Copper Reactions
July 3	Determination of an Empirical Formula
July 10	Gravimetric Determination of Phosphorous in Plant Food
July 17	Vitamin C & Orange Juice Analysis
July 24	Chemical Kinetics: The Iodine Clock Experiment
July 31	Introduction to Spectrophotometry
August 7	Spectrophotometric Determination of Iron in Vitamin Pills
August 14	Spectrophotometric Determination of an Equilibrium Constant
August 21	NaOH Standardization and KHP Determination
August 28	Alchemy (bring a bunch of new, shiny pennies!)

Report Guidelines. Lab reports will be due one week after the experiment is performed. Most lab reports will take the form of a series of questions that will be attached to the lab handouts. Download and print these questions and turn in after the lab is complete.