DIY Instrument Making: How to build in-house spectrometers and analytical devices

Rather than treating analytical instruments as black boxes you order from a catalog, this course has you open them up and rebuild the pieces yourself, working through the electronics, optics, and signal processing that make a spectrometer or sensor actually measure something. Expect hands-on projects where you wire op-amps, handle ADC sampling and aliasing, apply digital filters and curve fitting, and ultimately assemble working DIY spectrometers, microscopes, or pH/conductivity sensors, backed by Skoog-level instrumental analysis theory. It builds naturally on general chemistry and basic electronics, and pays off in any interdisciplinary research where you need a custom probe instead of whatever the vendor sells.