Advanced Instrumental Analysis

Instrumental analysis is about turning physical signals — photons absorbed, ions deflected, currents measured — into reliable chemical information, and this course teaches you to reason from the underlying physics through the electronics and optics up to what the spectrum actually tells you. You'll work through problem sets on signal-to-noise, optical components, and the major spectroscopic and spectrometric methods (AAS, ICP-MS, FTIR, Raman, NMR, MS), give a presentation, and sit two midterms plus a final built around Skoog. It builds on your analytical and physical chemistry background and is the bridge to research labs, where picking the right technique — and trusting its output — is half the work.