Question

Difference between analytical and organic chemistry

Answer 1

Analytical and Organic chemistry are two major fields that have many similarities and differences in Chemistry. Organic chemistry is concerned with the reactions and behavior of carbon atoms and molecules, which comprise most materials in our universe. Analytical chemistry, on the other hand, is concerned with detecting and quantifying particular atoms or molecules (an analyte) in a solution or mixture (called a matrix or matrices in AC). Both fields overlap heavily in their use of separation techniques (chromatography, organic-aqueous extractions, and others) and detection instrumentation (nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), infrared spectroscopy (IR), and mass spectrometry (MS)). Where these areas split is the type of questions these technologies are used to answer. In organic, these technologies are most often used to establish the identity and purity of a product from an organic reaction. In this way, the results produced are more qualitative than quantitative. In analytical, standards solutions of known concentration are used to create mathematical models that are applied to matrices suspected of containing the same molecules. The signal produced by one of the methods above can be used to quantify the concentration of an analyte in the unknown solution. The results found here are more quantitative than qualitative. Hope this helps!