In almost all undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory curricula, students are taught the concepts of organic extraction and infrared spectroscopy through some appropriate experiments. In the case of organic extraction, a typical experiment, found in most organic chemistry laboratory manuals, involves the extraction of caffeine from tea. Furthermore, it is common for students to perform infrared spectroscopy in a separate experiment, allowing the student to gain a better understanding of the unique vibrations of distinct functional groups. In this short communication, we report the integration of these laboratory activities into a single activity, which teaches the concepts of green chemistry, organic extraction, and analytical infrared spectroscopy.
Andre et al. (Tue,) studied this question.