Benchtop Spectrometer Helps to Teach Students the Practical use of NMR for Spectroscopic Characterisation in Organic Chemistry

Magritek reports on the benefits of their Spinsolve Benchtop NMR spectrometer for teaching practical organic chemistry to undergraduate students at Cleveland State University in Ohio.

Dr Vania De Paoli is an associate college lecturer in the Department of Chemistry at Cleveland State University in Ohio. She is leading a program to create a solid environment for teaching Organic Chemistry. This focuses on critical thinking and analysis where every experiment is seen as a small project. The goal allows students to experience every experiment performed in lab as a (junior) scientist. Not only are synthetic skills important, but the students also need to be able to analyse their reagents and products to answer questions such as ‘does what I have made need extra purification’ or ‘what was my yield?’

Prior to investing in the Magritek benchtop NMR spectrometer, students' practical options were limited to the measurement of melting points and refractive index. Old gas chromatographs were so old, they were no longer functional. Students were not experiencing anything close to life in a modern organic chemistry laboratory.

As Dr De Paoli says, the Spinsolve has changed this position immensely. "It is a small system, portable and lightweight. It is quickly ready to use allowing the students to have a real NMR analysis experience (they prepare the samples in standard NMR tubes, add the solvent and record the spectra in similar ways to a research grade NMR). The spectra are of good quality. The software is friendly and, overall, Spinsolve is readily affordable."

To complement the spectrometer, Magritek provides a series of support aids to those teaching NMR. These include videos, practical experiment protocols and lab manuals. Supplied free of charge, these useful tools are available by clicking here: https://ilmt.co/PL/yEDQ.