Thursday, 17 May 2007
3rd Floor Hall (Pfahler Hall)
381

Determination of Refractive Index Using Laser Pointer: Quantitative Analysis of Binary Solvent Systems

Helen Chon and Jun H. Shin. Queensborough Community College, Bayside, NY

Refractive index is one of well-known analytical technique to identify compound, however, it is rarely adopted to the undergraduate laboratory curriculum because (i) the cost of a refractometer is too high to be used in the undergraduate laboratory, (ii) measurement of refractive index by refractometer is too simple to be included in the undergraduate laboratory curriculum, and (iii) proper and easy to approach setup for the experiment is not fully developed yet. Recently we have developed a simple, accurate and inexpensive setup for a refractive index experiment using a laser pointer. The setup was very easy to use and was very accurate for single solvent system. The refractive index measurement setting has been further applied to various binary solvent systems for the quantitative analysis (% volume). During the investigation, aqueous solutions have showed non-ideal behavior while ideal behavior has been observed on non-aqueous solutions.

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