This project will purchase a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer (GC/MS) system for the chemistry department at Lawrence University. The chemistry department is committed to curricular reforms that will (a) expand the use of open-ended, student-driven laboratory projects that address real problems; b) increase the use of natural products, biologically relevant compounds, and environmental samples as the focus of such problems in the laboratory; and (c) continue our transition to smaller-scale laboratory manipulations. The GC/MS instrument will further these reforms principally by enhancing the department's analytical capabilities, greatly extending the range of concentrations at which students can detect, quantify, and identify organic materials, and enabling students to obtain crucial new (mass spectral) data on reaction products in course-related laboratories. As a result students in Analytical Chemistry and Instrumental Analysis will carry out projects involving environmental samples (surface water or pesticides on food) in which substances of interest are present at concentrations too low to quantify and identify by currently available techniques. Students in the Organic Chemistry laboratory, many of whom are not chemistry majors but are strongly interested in life sciences, will apply the techniques and reactions to more compounds of direct biological or biochemical interest, because the instrument will permit better separation, identification, and quantification of relatively complex substances. A new Environmental Chemistry course will use the instrument extensively in studies of a local, heavily polluted lake, contributing important new data on that problem to the local community. In addition, the instrument will broaden the range of undergraduate research projects accessible to Lawrence students. The courses most affected by this instrument enroll 50 to 70 students per year, all of whom will have repeated hands-on experience with it.
