Enhancing the Undergraduate Chemistry Experience with Gas Chromatography

A capillary gas chromatograph (GC) is being widely used in a number of courses. The use of this instrument is allowing a number of the laboratories to be more educational and informative for the students, and is making it possible to introduce a number of new experiments into organic chemistry, instrumental analysis, inorganic chemistry, physical science, and several upper-level chemistry courses. New experiments are being added to the physical science courses in an effort to introduce the non-science major to the gas chromatograph, one of the most widely used pieces of scientific equipment. Several of the undergraduate research groups also are benefiting from having a capillary GC available. The capillary GC also is used by nearby Coastal Georgia Community College's students as part of a program in which they make use of the instrumentation at Armstrong for analyzing their laboratory samples. An additional use of the instrument is in Armstrong's Community Outreach Program in which a large number of high school and middle school students visit Armstrong and carry out laboratory experiments. *