8 weeks · 0 milestones
Plan and execute (or rigorously analyse) a chemical synthesis: document the procedure (reagents, quantities, reaction conditions, safety precautions), isolation methodology, percentage yield calculation, and full characterisation data (melting or boiling point, spectroscopic data including at least one of NMR, IR, or MS). The proof is the lab notebook record or equivalent documentation plus characterisation data with comparison to published literature values. For students without lab access, the accessible alternative is a rigorous comparative analysis of characterisation data from ChemSpider, Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC — free for academic use), or SDBS for a named literature compound — documenting each characterisation value, comparison to the reference, and what discrepancies would indicate about purity or identity. Reviewed by a chemist who challenges the characterisation interpretation, specifically asking about discrepancies between measured and reference values and what they indicate about the sample.