270152 UE Basic Chemistry Laboratory Course I (2008S)

Part A (Safety in the Laboratory): Glass equipment, broken glass and corresponding injuries, cutting and bending of glass tubes. Laboratory equipment: heating, stirring, distillation, setting up of apparatus using ground joints. Vacuum: suction, evacuation, drying in a desiccator. Chemicals: labeling, handling of flammable materials, danger of fire, prevention of fires, fire extinguishers. Personal protection, breathing protection. Gasses under pressure. Very cold materials.

Part B (Proseminar): Selected exercises in 6 units which deal with typical problems of general chemistry.
a) Nomenclature and setting up reaction equations
b) Concentration and stoichiometry
c) Solubility of ionic substances and behavior of gases
d) Redox reactions and coordination compounds
e) Acids and bases, pH-value
f) Chemical equilibria and aspects of qualitative analysis
Each unit consists of a teaching part, where the methods to solve the problems are demonstrated, and one examination part, where the students have to prove their abilities to solve the corresponding test exercises.

Part C (introductory laboratory course): Basic equipment of a chemist. Separation operations (separation by selective dissolution or precipitation, centrifugation, formation of complexes, ion exchange). Observation and description of chemical reactions (color of solutions, precipitation reactions, deposition of metals, evolution of gases, redox reactions in aqueous solutions, formation of complexes). Basic operations of quantitative work (preparation of standard solutions, neutralization titration, glass electrode, emf of concentration cells, gasvolumetric measurements). Introduction into qualitative analysis of solutions containing selected cations and anions (detection by chemical reactions, spectroscopic detection). Documentation of experiments and keeping a laboratory journal.

Part C (introduction into chemical synthesis): chemical synthesis of simple chemical compounds under supervision.