Clove oil Our experience with Uncovering Chemical Secrets This workshop, developed by Cardiff University and Techniquest was designed to introduce us to the methods chemists use to isolate and identify chemical compounds. The work is relevant to our schools A2 chemistry curriculum and involves the isolation and characterisation of natural substances responsible for taste and smell in fruit and other plant material. We used laboratory equipment to isolate our own samples and then completed a series of tests on the compounds together with some other common substances. It was good practice for the work we will do for our organic chemistry studies. In the afternoon, we toured the School of Chemistry to see how modern state-of-the-art techniques and instrumentation are used to determine purity and give clues to chemical structure and properties. Eugenol is found in clove oil Paclitaxel is a drug used in the treatment of cancer. It was discovered 1967 when chemists isolated the compound from the bark of the Pacific yew tree, and noted its antitumor activity. A little bit of Hollywood science introduced us to the fact that some important medicines are extracted from natural substances and that clove oil is good for relieving toothache. We extracted limonene from oranges and lemons, menthone from peppermint and eugenol from clove buds. We performed simple chemical tests on our own extracts but later we were shown how spectroscopy is used to comprehensively analyse the samples we isolated. The University's School of Chemistry has spectrometers costing many hundreds of thousands of pounds and these state-of-the-art machines can fully analyse samples in microscopically small samples. We took turns in using an infrared spectrometer Spectroscopy has many important applications and spectrometers are routinely used in research, industry and medicine. There are many different types of spectroscopy, each of which gives different information about the test compound. Limonene is found in oranges and lemons but a different form of limonene (which smells and tastes quite different) is found in spearmint. Queens College Independent School These techniques are the primary methods used for the identification, measurement of purity and properties of chemical compounds. Various spectroscopic techniques are of crucial importance in all areas of chemistry, biology and physics and in professional applications in medicine, pharmaceuticals, forensic science, environmental sciences etc. – wherever the identity or purity of any chemical compound is required. All chemicals involved in mining, transport, pharmaceuticals, engineering, food, electronics, textiles/fashion, cosmetics (the list is endless) are dependent on spectroscopy of one form or another. Because it is so important, the development of new or better spectroscopic methods is a major area of research in modern chemistry. a. A 400 MHz NMR spectrometer c. High performance liquid chromatography coupled with a mass spectrometer b. High resolution mass spectrometer a. b. c.