An upper division laboratory project has been developed as a collaborative investigation of a reaction that is routinely taught in organic chemistry courses, reduction of carbonyl compounds by borohydride reagents. Determination of several trends regarding structure-activity relationship was possible because every student contributed his/her results to the overall picture, situation similar to a research environment.    The students learned how to use H NMR technique for in situ kinetic determinations as well as apply prior knowledge from not only chemistry curriculum, i. e. physical chemistry, as well from other courses in writing formal reports and making peer-reviewed oral presentations. The advantages of collaborative projects as opposed to individual ones in complex problem solving suitability will be highlighted in the context of the studied reaction. The potential of NMR spectroscopy in accurate experimental data generation in undergraduate laboratory experiments will also be discussed.

Structure-reactivity relationships in carbonyl reduction – an NMR study

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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