Demonstrating the importance of cleanliness and safety in an undergraduate teaching laboratory

Safety and cleanliness are often-overlooked components for the success of chemists in any type of environment. Today's undergraduate chemists are often not fully prepared to enter the work place because they are not equipped with the necessary skill, knowledge, and attentive safety attitude for jobs in the laboratory. This article proposes a new, hands-on method of teaching laboratory cleanliness to undergraduate students via an organic laboratory experiment. A survey was given to participants who performed this laboratory experiment and to a control group to evaluate how completion of the experiment affected the following: (a) development of a greater appreciation of laboratory cleanliness, (b) understanding of the concept of thin-layer chromatography (TLC), and (c) development of a greater appreciation of common laboratory techniques.