Discover Chemistry - 2 July 2012

Please note that this event is now fully booked and no more reserve bookings are being taken.

This event provides hands-on experience of Chemistry courses at The University of Manchester. It gives you the chance to see (and use) for yourselves the kind of scientific instrumentation (Infrared spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance etc) you only hear about in school or see on television.

On the day you will experience the chemist’s daily miracle of converting one thing into another: chemical synthesis. You will synthesise diphenylmethanol from benzophenone, a reaction type you may have studied at A-level but won’t have done for yourselves. Follow the conversion of a carbon-oxygen double-bond to a single-bond by infrared spectroscopy and check on progress and purity by thin-layer chromatography on silica, visualised by ultra-violet lamp. These processes are typical of how new medicines are discovered.

After lunch, during which you can chat to current Chemistry students, you will tour other instrumental facilities in the department including nuclear magnetic resonance, mass spectrometry/gas chromatography and x-ray diffraction. Then, a brief career talk showing where a degree in chemistry might lead, will be followed by an entertaining demonstration lecture to round off the day with a bang! These sorts of demonstrations play a key role in lectures at Manchester.

Provisional programme

Please note that this programme is subject to change.

Useful links

• Chemistry courses