The module is suitable for a wide range of courses including liberal arts chemistry and general chemistry. It serves as a good introduction to gas chromatography in organic chemistry or analytical chemistry laboratories. Chemical separation and analysis is based on an understanding of equilibria. In the process students investigate complex ion formation and amphoterism. Next the selective precipitation of the cations as sulfides is investigated.
Students then run confirmation tests on the cations.
Once students have explored the reactions outlined above, they are asked to develop a separation scheme for a set of three of the cations and then to test it in the laboratory. Students in each pair are assigned complementary three-cation sets so that, between the two students, all five cations are included. Once the pair's three-cation schemes have been successfully demonstrated in the lab, the pair is challenged to develop a separation scheme for the complete set of five cations. They then test out their five-cation scheme. The lab might not appear especially difficult, but it is tremendously rich in concepts.