Esterification Workshop 2017
June 04, 2017
Shaun Tan
"Interesting, met a few mishaps but still managed to get the product in the end, learnt a lot of lab techniques and apparatus."
- A student's feedback on her overall experience
NUS ACSSC held an esterification workshop for high school students in June 2017. The workshop aimed to bring life to the A-level syllabus, teaching students that synthesizing an ester is not as simple as acid + alcohol. Through the workshop, students learnt how to really perform techniques such as reflux and distillation, which before were only foreign words and theories meant to be memorized.
​
The workshop began with a short briefing by Mr Fung Fun Man, lecturer at National University of Singapore (NUS) and conducting officer for this workshop. The briefing emphasized on laboratory safety, as the participants were handling chemicals and performing reactions that they had never encountered before in their high school practicals.
Next was the highlight of the event - the experiment. Participants were given 4 hours to synthesize the ester according to the lab manual provided. Even though there were many hiccups along the way as the students grappled with unfamiliar chemicals and apparatus, all of them eventually achieved the correct product.
Finally, each participant was awarded with a certificate endorsed by NUS and ACSSC. Prizes were also awarded to the pairs with the top three yields. We would like to thank everyone who made this event a success, and we hope to see more participants next year!
"I can tell my teacher I know how to do a reflux setup now."
- Witty response from a participant, on the usefulness of the workshop