Although a wide range of fruitful applications of NMR spectroscopy has been achieved in a wide range of scientific disciplines, the use of NMR as a pedagogic tool for teaching chemical principles to undergraduate students remains relatively unexplored.  NMR spectroscopy is in fact a versatile and robust teaching tool for connecting and engaging students with the molecular world and its operative principles.   This presentation will describe experiments where 60 MHz proton NMR spectroscopy is used to introduce students to reaction kinetics.  Many of these experiments involve performing reactions in NMR tubes.  These microscale experiments represent a safe, efficient, inexpensive, and effective means for teaching students the principles of chemical reactivity.  Monitoring the progress of reactions performed in NMR tubes can be straightforwardly accomplished by measuring the areas of resolved resonances of either reactants or products with respect to time.  Examples of kinetic experiments to be presented include Diels-Alder reactions and nucleophilic substitution reactions of alkyl halides.

NMR as an effective and convenient tool for teaching reaction kinetics in undergraduate organic laboratory courses

245th National Meeting (2013)

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