An overview of some natural products with two A-level science club natural products experiments
Issue 366 | Page 62 | Published Sep 2017
Description
Natural products are ubiquitous in nature but do not form a large proportion of the A-level syllabuses in the UK. In this article we briefly discuss a small selection of natural products, focusing on alcohols, aldehydes and ketones, and alkaloids. We then outline two natural product experiments that are suitable for A-level chemistry clubs or similar. Experiment 1 is the isolation and analysis of caffeine from tea, and Experiment 2 is the extraction and characterisation of a volatile oil, eugenol, from cloves. These experiments include a variety of laboratory techniques, including steam distillation, determination of melting point, thin-layer chromatography and column chromatography, infrared spectroscopy and ultraviolet spectrophotometry.
More from this issue
There is much more to science education than the requirements demanded by the examination curriculum. This article illustrates one example of an...
Some impressions of the ASE Scotland Annual Conference 2017 from a teacher participant and exhibitor.
Matter can be described and explained in a number of ways, using models of increasing complexity depending on the intended audience. Under the...