Students' Attitudes toward and Conceptual Understanding of Chemical Instrumentation

The interactions of students with chemical instrumentation and chromatographic techniques were observed in a second-semester general chemistry course for chemistry majors. Students engaged in a lab activity in which groups of three or four students used flash column chromatography, thin-layer chromatography, infrared spectroscopy, and gas chromatography to separate and identify two organic compounds in an unknown solution. For most students, this was their first exposure to these techniques and instruments. Data collected from field notes, surveys, and interviews are used to evaluate (i) the attitudes students have toward using instrumentation, (ii) how students relate the underlying chemical concepts to the instrumentation, and (iii) how working in a group impacts students' attitudes toward, and their conceptual understanding of, chemical instrumentation.