qualitative and instrumental analysis chemisty class

[pballer66]

Hi everyone. I did a search to see if I could find anything on this class and the info was fairly scarce. Just trying to see what some people thought about this class. Thank you very much in advance. Hope everyone that took the mcat did well.

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[Pancho Villa]

the instrumental analysis class at my university sucks. you learn how all of the machines and techniques you would use in a lab actually work, and the principles they are based on. it's very detail-oriented, but nothing complicated. which reminds me, i have the final for that class in two days, so i gotta start studying.

 

[ShyRem]

It depends on you. I thought it was a pretty darn easy (and fun!) class. If you like playing with lots of machines and learning how they work and when/why to use that particular method over another, you'll like it. I mean, really, most students don't get to play with the ICP machine, or HPLC, or any of the other toys in the chem labs in gen chem or ochem. We didn't do anything with NMR 'cuz it was so extensively covered in ochem.

If you just want to get the f*^& out of school you may not like it much. If you're planning on taking the ACS exams you may need this class.

 

[Severus]

I don't get why people complain about this class; like ShyRem said, it's easy and fun.

As long as you don't mind a bit of algebra and aren't completely terrible at lab, it should be an easy A/A+.

Go for it.

 

[austinap]

I agree with the previous two as well. I didn't like quantitative very much (the lab was just a little too dull for me... the class work was interesting though, but again, rather tedious). I'm instrumental right now and I love it. I really don't think much of the material is very difficult, but again I like playing with things and figuring out why they work. I think that instrumental especially is a very useful class, and I would recommend it to any chem, biol, or physics major.

 

[pballer66]

Yeah its specifically required by my school, and its one of those classes I've never really heard much about. Just trying to see what to expect.

 

[austinap]

What to expect? Instrumental analysis is a little bit of everything. A good instrumental class will deal with everything from circuits analysis to physical chemistry, but these are only tools used to explain how and why a given piece of equipment does what it does. There is some math, but nothing extensive and is usually limited to some algebraic manipulations.

Quantitative analysis is a little more mathematical, but really only invovles a few concepts that you should get down pretty well by the end of the course. The quant. class here was almost all solution chemistry, and the lab involved a lot of titrations. You should have equilibrium chemistry mastered by the time you're done with quant!

 

[chad5871]

Quantitative analysis is a little more mathematical, but really only invovles a few concepts that you should get down pretty well by the end of the course. The quant. class here was almost all solution chemistry, and the lab involved a lot of titrations. You should have equilibrium chemistry mastered by the time you're done with quant!

👍 I'm in quant. now and it involves a LOT of titrations. We have also done much spectroscopy and electrochemistry. I somewhat liked it, except having to calculate all sorts of numbers using activity (instead of concentration) can be a pain in the rear.

For those who have taken quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis - which did you like better? Which did you think was more difficult?