PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

What do you do when you suffer from headaches? In such situations, many people take a headache tablet, a so-called analgesic. Pharmaceuticals offer the possibility for a contemporary und real-life chemistry lesson. The students get an insight into the chemical product manufacturing as well as the identity and purity testing of medicinal substances on the example of non-prescription analgesic paracetamol. This article describes the experience with a pharmaceutical-workshop in the students' lab biology-vivid at the University of Bielefeld and presents the experiments as the synthesis of paracetamol and various qualitative and quantitative analysis. The students learn techniques of preparative organic chemistry get a sense of the ways of working in pharmacy and learn systematic technical content based on materials from their world of experience. The presented student experiments can be perfectly used in the lessons to sensitize students as early as possible for their own health.