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Incorporating Sustainability and Life Cycle Assessment into First-Year Inorganic Chemistry Major Laboratories

Incorporating Sustainability and Life Cycle Assessment into First-Year Inorganic Chemistry Major Laboratories
Contributors
University of Pennsylvania
Learning Objets
Summary
This is a J Chem Ed article that outlines how we redesigned an Inorganic Chemistry laboratory course to create a consistent and focused approach to green chemistry, leading to an increase in a research mindset.
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.5b00281

Authors: Marta Guron, Jared Paul, Margaret Roeder

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Moderation state
Published
Object Type
Journal articles
Audience
Introductory Undergraduate
Upper/Advanced Undergraduate
Published on
Green Chemistry Principles
Less Hazardous Chemical Syntheses
Safer Solvents and Auxiliaries
Safer Chemistry for Accident Prevention
U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Responsible Consumption and Production
Learning Goals/Student Objectives
From the syllabus:
This class will involve the synthesis, isolation, purification, and characterization of a variety of inorganic compounds. The laboratory is designed to reinforce concepts from CHM 1311 and to allow you to learn the basic techniques and skills employed by practicing inorganic chemists. In addition to building technical skills, the major learning objectives focus on building scientific writing skills and developing an understanding of safety (including chemical waste assessment from experiments) in the laboratory. The laboratory course is divided into three major sections: 1) The first half of the course will focus on building technical skills and teaching you how to write laboratory reports; 2) This will be followed by a more intensive and guided laboratory experience that will encourage you to draw connections between many experiments and write a more thorough report; 3) The laboratory experience will be concluded with a four-week project that will bring together all of the aspects in the laboratory course as well as the CHM 1311 course while adding flexibility to encourage a true research experience that one would encounter in a research laboratory.

Common pedagogies covered
Hands-on learning

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Safety Precautions, Hazards, and Risk Assessment
The traditional literature syntheses of the Werner complexes involved some hazardous materials such as 30% H2O2, as well as other laboratory hazards. However, this article focused on the structure of the lab course rather than the experimental details themselves.