Abstract:

While taking fundamental chemistry experiments courses, students may easily lose their interest owing to their limited understanding of related chemical principles. Many of these principles involve microscopic concepts and quantities hard to determine and describe, such as the interaction among matters, state of electrons in matters, the interactions between light and electricity with molecules. Results from theoretical chemistry investigations are capable to bridge this gap and present these quantities and concepts more vivid for students to understand the principles easily. Considering the separation of alcohols by gas chromatography as an example, we attempted to combine theoretical chemistry investigations with fundamental chemistry experiments to help students rationalize the chromatography theory with experimental and theoretical results. In addition to conventional experiments, students investigated the alcohols- adsorbents interactions theoretically and analyzed the results. This approach not only successfully stimulated students to learn and understand chemical principles more comprehensively, cultivated their problem identification and resolution abilities, but also promoted the teaching quality, thus benefiting the cultivation of top innovative talents in chemistry.

Key words: Instrumental analysis, Analytic chemistry, Gas chromatography, Top innovative talents