Abstract:

Instrumental analysis plays an essential role in contemporary analytical chemistry. Student’s misconceptions concerning instrumental methods, procedures and protocols have been established from coordinated tests, tutorial interviews and laboratory lessons. Misconceptions include a non-structured view of methods, procedures, etc., and erroneous view of concepts dealing with data treatment, errors calculation, relationships between variables. Misconceptions can be divided into formal, involving specific concepts and formulations within the general frame of chemistry, operational/topical, dealing with specific capabilities, problems and operations in chemistry, methodological, associated to peculiar methods of analytical chemistry and data treatment, and, social, regarding the relation of analytical data with the social frame. Remarkably, analytical instrumentation is frequently viewed as an autonomous, error-free black box providing non-structured data with no need of calibration or control, whereas weak relationships are established between data and aims along the analytical process.