Undergraduate physical chemistry and instrumental analysis laboratories can be enhanced by employing as teaching tools novel technologies in electronics and data integration using the industrial Internet. A common problem in the chemistry laboratory is the students’ “mental detachment” from the instrumentation and software which turns laboratory sessions into “push button” exercises with unsatisfactory learning outcomes. The problems can be addressed using the proposed approach that helps relating the data students obtain to the underlying physical and chemical processes occurring in samples being investigated. The project carried out by upper-division undergraduates is described. Students are exposed to a complete process of building, calibrating, and programming an automatic titrator using an open-source microcontroller platform and standard pH probes, and integrating the instrument into the Internet. The approach is flexible and can be used to enable integration of various laboratory instruments (e.g. temperature, pressure, salinity probes, etc.) into the industrial Internet. The hardware and software are open-source which makes further modification and development by the academic community possible.

Integration chemistry laboratory instrumentation into the industrial internet

251st National Meeting (2016)

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