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Research School of Chemistry · ANU College of Science and Medicine
Structural elucidation is essential in all areas of chemistry, from understanding the behaviour of engineered enzymes or functional materials, to the creation of new medicines to treat disease. This course describes the fundamentals of chemical structure and symmetry, and the use of molecular orbital theory and quantum mechanics to understand molecular properties and chemical spectroscopy. It has a major focus on problem solving and acquiring applied skills to deploy concepts of symmetry, spectroscopy, spectrometry and diffraction to define chemical structure across all states of matter. Advanced research-level strategies for elucidating complex structures will be developed by connecting the partial structural information obtained from infra-red spectroscopy (IR), UV-visible spectroscopy, 1D and 2D nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, mass spectrometry (MS) and X-ray crystallography. This course is co-taught with undergraduate students but assessed separately
Symmetry mid-semester exam
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 3
X-ray Diffraction assignment
Learning outcomes 1, 4, 5
Structure solving assignments
Learning outcomes 1, 5, 6
Spectroscopy and spectrometry end of semester exam
Learning outcomes 1, 5, 6
The expected workload will consist of approximately 130 hours throughout the session including: - Summer session: 10 x 3 hour lectures plus 10 x 3 hour workshops over the intensive 2 week component. - Sem 1: Face-to face component which may consist of 3 x 1 hour lectures plus 1 x 3 hour workshops per week - Plus approximately 65 hours of self-study which will include preparation for lectures, workshops and other assessment tasks.
Organic Structures from Spectra. L D Field. S Sternhell and J R Kalman. 5th edn (John Wiley and Sons. 2013)