Abstract
Guided, open-ended investigations (practicals) using environmentally important unknowns allow undergraduate students in an instrumental methods course to explore more than one way to solve an analytical problem. Here we show that analysis of acrolein and acrylonitrile using SPME–GC/MS is much less problematic than the EPA method using HPLC. The availability of both methods significantly enhances the learning experience, particularly with the SPME sampling technique, which is not expensive or difficult to implement and improves both sampling selectivity and sensitivity of detection (reducing interference problems). Even where the goal is not to teach environmental chemistry, the realistic problems such analyses provide are useful in learning instrumental methods of analysis.
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