1. Electrical Components and Circuits

Introduction. Define voltage, current, resistance and discuss their characteristics, and describe a basic electric circuit. Explain Ohm’s law, and calculate current, voltage and resistance in a circuit. Make basic circuit measurements.

Series Circuits. Apply Kirchhoff’s voltage law, and determine the current in a series circuit and total series resistance. Apply Ohm’s law in series circuits, use a series circuit as a voltage divider and determine power in a series circuit.

Parallel Circuits. Identify a parallel circuit, determine the voltage across each parallel branch and apply Kirchhoff’s current law. Determine total parallel resistance, power in a parallel circuit, and the total effect of current sources in parallel, and use a parallel circuit as a current divider.

Series-Parallel Circuits. Identify series-parallel relationships, and analyze series-parallel circuits and a Wheatstone bridge

Branch, Mesh, and Node Analysis. Use the branch current method, mesh analysis and node analysis to find unknown quantities in a circuit.

Introduction to Alternating Current and Voltage. Identify a sinusoidal waveform and measure its characteristics, determine the various voltage and current values of a sine wave and describe angular relationships of sine waves. Mathematically analyze a sinusoidal waveform and use a phasor to represent a sine wave.

Capacitors. Describe the basic structure and characteristics of a capacitor, discuss various types of capacitors, and analyze series capacitors, parallel capacitors, capacitive dc switching circuits and capacitive ac circuits.

Semiconductor. Identify at least two semiconductor materials from the, periodic table of elements, list n-type and p-type dopants, describe a diode and apply diodes to wave rectification.

2. Operational Amplifiers. Explain how an ideal operational amplifier works, and use Kirchoff's laws as appropriate. Compare a variety of real operational amplifiers with the ideal and calculate the voltage gain of an inverting operational amplifier.

3. Signals and Noise.

Define signal to noise, discuss chemical noise and instrumental noise and how to minimize the noises.

4. Introduction to Separation. Chromatographic separations using mobile and stationary phases. Definition of partition ratio, migration rate, capacity factor, selectivity factor, retention times, plate height and number of plates and relationship to peak width. Definition of resolution and column efficiency. Van Deemter plots and equation and the general elution problem.

5. Gas Chromatography. Retention volumes, pressure drop and specific retention volumes, instrumentation (injection, columns, stationary phases, detectors) and temperature programming.

6. High Performance Liquid Chromatography. Instrumentation for HPLC, partition chromatography, normal and reversed-phase HPLC, isocratic and solvent programmed (gradient elution).

7. Mass Spectrometry. The mass spectrum, hard and soft ion sources (electron impact, chemical, electrospray, fast atom bombardment, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization), fragmentation and ion-molecule reactions, isotopic ratios, mass analyzers and resolution (magnetic sector, double-focusing, quadrupole, time-of-flight), sample introduction (batch, direct probe) and strategy for identifying compounds.

8. Liquid Chromatography – Mass Spectrometry.

9. Introduction to spectroscopy. Wave and particle description of light. Energy levels (electronic, vibrational, rotational), transitions, basic emission and absorption, fluorescence and phosphorescence, and beers' Law and limitations (chemical and physical).

10. Components of Optical Instruments. Radiation sources, detectors, wavelength separation devices (monochromator), and defining the quality of a monochromator.

11. An Introduction to Optical Atomic Spectrometry. Term symbols (again), contributions to natural line-width, the Boltzmann distribution.

12. Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy. Instrumentation for AAS. Flame and electrothermal atomization (graphite furnace). Hollow cathode lamps and spectrometers.

13. Atomic Emission Spectroscopy. Instrumentation for AES, plasma (ICP and DC) emission sources, single and multichannel monochromators (including slew-scan), applications and detection limits.

14. An Introduction to Ultraviolet/Visible Molecular Absorption Spectrometry. Beers' Law and limitations (chemical and physical), single and double beam instruments.

15. Applications of Ultraviolet/Visible Molecular Absorption Spectrometry. Origin of electronic spectra, typical organic absorbances and typical inorganic absorbances (ligand field splitting).

16. Luminescence spectrophotometry. Quantum numbers, multiplicity and term symbols. Nature of transitions producing fluorescence and phosphorescence, factors affecting fluorescence, instrumentation for quantitative luminescence measurements. Chemiluminescence.

17. IR Spectrophotometry. Description of normal modes, classical vibrational frequencies and quantum mechanics, harmonic and anharmonic oscillators, instrumentation, S/N ratios, Fourier transform instruments and applications of IR.