Meet the New Rock Stars in the Classroom – the 60Teach and the Educational Sample Kit

Teaching NMR spectroscopy can be both exciting and challenging. Ensuring students grasp fundamental concepts, preparing samples and optimizing lab time are key concerns for instructors. Our 60Teach paired with the recently released educational sample kit offers a game-changing solution for instructors and teaching assistants in technical schools and universities aiming to streamline their workflow while enhancing the learning experience for students.

The 60Teach is specifically designed with educational settings in mind. It combines ease of use with powerful capabilities, making it an ideal instrument for undergraduate and graduate-level NMR teaching. With user-friendly software and optimized small footprint hardware, the 60Teach allows students to focus on acquiring and analyzing NMR data rather than struggling with complicated instrument operation. Its intuitive interface ensures even beginners can quickly run experiments and grasp the fundamentals of NMR spectroscopy. The possibility to freely adjust all relevant experiment parameters like number of scans, spectral width, scan delay, pulse angle, and more, allow students to gain hands-on experience and deep understanding on how these parameters affect the NMR spectrum.

Figure 1. 60Teach main screen (left) and fully editable experiment settings (right).

Figure 2. Stacked spectra of a series of haloalkanes 1a – 1d.

A major challenge in NMR education is the selection of suitable analytes and the sample preparation. This process not only adds to the workload but also introduces potential sources of error that may lead to inconsistencies in student results. With the educational sample kit, instructors now have a ready-to-use solution. It consists of a series of pre-prepared, flame sealed NMR tubes containing different analytes, carefully selected to illustrate key NMR concepts, proven to be highly suitable for 60 MHz ¹H NMR spectra. Some of the samples are directly taken from our most frequently requested undergraduate sample experiments. For example, the kit includes haloalkane samples 1a – 1d (Figure 1) taken from the Observing Electronegativity via NMR Chemical Shift experiment varying only in the electronegativity of the chosen halogen.¹ Trends in electronegativity can be directly observed by the students running ¹H NMR spectra of these four compounds. The 60Teach is ideal for demonstrating important NMR principles such as chemical shifts, signal integration, coupling constants, and molecular structure elucidation. All samples chosen for the kit provide meaningful spectra on the 60Teach at a suitable concentration for running quick experiments.

The combination of the 60Teach and the educational sample kit brings multiple benefits to the teaching environments. The instructors don’t have to spend time finding and preparing suitable samples, allowing them to focus on teaching instead of laboratory preparation. No chemicals or deuterated solvents need to be purchased to run samples, reducing costs and minimizing chemical consumption and reducing waste. Since the samples can be reused over multiple semesters, they provide an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional sample preparation and disposal methods.

Thanks to Dr. Karen Haase and her students from Gewerbeschule Lübeck in Germany, who was our first customer using the educational sample kit in her NMR class and kindly provided some pictures of the sample kit in action (Figure 2). She said that she really enjoyed working with the new educational sample kit in her upper-level lab assistant course. For more customer experiences please see our Academic Testimonials.

Figure 3. Students at the Gewerbeschule in Lübeck working with the educational sample kit (left) using a smartboard to extend the internal display of their benchtop NMR (right).

In summary, the 60Teach and the educational sample kit revolutionize the way NMR is taught. Instructors can easily integrate the 60Teach into their curriculum by structuring lab sessions around key learning objectives. By simplifying sample preparation, reducing costs, and promoting sustainability, these tools allow educators to create a more efficient and engaging learning environment. Whether you’re an instructor looking to optimize your teaching approach or a teaching assistant seeking to enhance lab sessions, the combination of 60Teach and the educational sample kit provides a powerful solution for modern NMR education.

Please make sure to review our sample experiments and reach out to us to learn more about using benchtop NMR in academic teaching.

References:
[1] M. A. Everest, J. M. Vargason, J. Chem. Edu.2013, 90, 926.