Small-Scale, Low-Cost Analytical Instruments: Extended Opportunities for Learning Analytical Chemistry

This contribution challenges the often misleading perception that there is only one way of doing analytical chemistry, i.e., with complicated and costly professional instrumentation. And if a school or university does not possess such instrumentation, or has no access to it, there is no other way to proceed. Here we describe a low-cost spectrometer with a microreaction chamber and a tri-colour light-emitting diode as the light source, which we developed to satisfy the needs for an appropriate low-cost device. The spectrometer can be easily upgraded into several different analytical instruments, e.g., a gas and a liquid chromatograph, a flow injection analysis system with spectrometric detection and a spectrometric microtitrator, all of which enable a sound introduction to the fundamentals of instrumental analytical methods using a hands-on approach and are suitable for real-life applications. More than 60 hands-on experiments for different educational levels and from different chemistrybased and chemistry-related disciplines were developed for this equipment through two European Leonardo da Vinci projects entitled “Hands-on approach to analytical chemistry for vocational schools”. The descriptions of the experiments are freely accessible online at the trilingual project websites (http://www.kii3.ntf.uni-lj.si/analchemvoc2/file.php/1/HTML/Default.htm). In December 2011 the second project was awarded the first national prize (Apple of quality 2011) for the best Leonardo da Vinci project for the transfer of innovation.