Laboratories

Chemistry is an experimental science and so practical work forms a large part of the learning experience.  In the first year you will have two 3 hour laboratory sessions per week.  These will begin by reinforcing and building on your pre-university practical work.  Your practical course aims to introduce you to new experimental skills in synthesis, reactivity and characterization together with planning your experiments before you do them and the concepts of accurate scientific report writing.  Some experiments require more than one pair of hands to collect the data from equipment, so pair and group working is necessary for some experiments.  Mostly you work on your own through a defined programme of experiments, some of which are based on lecture materials and some of which teach new concepts.

In second and third year you will continue to develop higher level practical skills with about 10 hours per week of practical work.  Laboratory work continues to develop and introduce new experimental techniques, sometimes building on lecture material and occasionally introducing new concepts via the laboratory course. Some instrumental practicals involve working in pairs, whilst there is group working on a project using the protein structure database.

Your practical work will be assessed continually and will contribute to your end of year mark (typically 25%).