King’s College Chemistry lab visit – Yr 13 – Mustafa J

On the 25th of April, the Yr 13 Chemistry students visited Kings College to complete our practical endorsement by synthesising Aspirin from Salicylic Acid. Aspirin is a widely used natural drug that’s used to treat heart disease, arthritis, etc. I believe that by having gone to King’s that day, we were able to gain an insight as to what proper lab work was like; standing for many hours, ensuring we had produced fine crystals and analysing and performing calculations with our results. To create the aspirin with minimal errors and maximise the purity and yield, we were taught new techniques and how to use new equipment. On top of completing the practical, we were given the opportunity to view and…

On the 25th of April, the Yr 13 Chemistry students visited Kings College to complete our practical endorsement by synthesising Aspirin from Salicylic Acid. Aspirin is a widely used natural drug that’s used to treat heart disease, arthritis, etc. I believe that by having gone to King’s that day, we were able to gain an insight as to what proper lab work was like; standing for many hours, ensuring we had produced fine crystals and analysing and performing calculations with our results. To create the aspirin with minimal errors and maximise the purity and yield, we were taught new techniques and how to use new equipment. On top of completing the practical, we were given the opportunity to view and use a real NMR and Infrared machines together, to interpret multiple spectra and determine the right ones. We believe that this was an insightful experience that we will never forget, whilst also providing us with the confidence to enter university in September and perform lab work effectively and efficiently.