Dr. Paul Mazzocchi Dr. Dorothy Mazzocchi

3 Credits

In general, graduate courses in spectroscopy teach graduate students how to utilize spectroscopic techniques to determine molecular structures so that they can proceed with their graduate research. To a lesser extent these courses generally deal with practical applications and chemical dynamics. That orientation is quite appropriate for students in a research oriented curriculum and I have taught such a course many times during my academic career.

However the MCLFS audience is quite different and you, as students, are not likely to be involved in any significant way in determining the structures of unknown compounds. Accordingly this course will not focus on how to determine structures but on how structures are determined. You will learn the theory behind a variety of spectroscopic techniques, the principles of utilizing those techniques and the strategies that chemists use to combine data from different sources to come to a valid conclusion. The course will also cover the utilization of these techniques and their derivatives (CAT, GC-MS, MRI, etc,) in fields such as medicine, law enforcement, defense, environmental science, etc.