Facilities and Equipment

Swarthmore's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry is housed in a state-of-the-art, integrated science facility, which includes modern classrooms and teaching laboratories as well as a generous amount of laboratory space for student-faculty research.

Chemistry equipment

The College's labs are equipped with modern instrumentation that students use in their course work and research. Among the major items are:

Bruker Ascend 400MHz NMR with autosampler
electron spin resonance spectrometer
high-performance liquid chromatography apparatus
X-ray diffractometer
circular dichroism spectrometer, AVIV 410
gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer
molecular modeling and visualization facility using GAUSSIAN software
infrared and ultraviolet/visible spectrophotometers
capillary electrophoresis apparatus
high-precision differential scanning (micro) calorimeter
various spectrofluorimeters
multiple GCs used in organic laboratory

Specialized Biochemistry equipment

One AKTA Basic and two units of AKTA Prime - high quality liquid chromatography system for protein purification.
PCR Thermal Cycler and MJ Research MiniCycler with Hot Bonnet
Cell Disruptor: Microfluidics M-110Y microfluidizer - can lyse large volumes of bacteria very quickly.
Two Refrigerated Centrifuges - Sorvall RC-5C centrifuge with SS-34 rotor and Sorvall RC-6+
Small Volume Nanodrop ND-1000 UV/Visible spectrophotometer - great for protein or DNA concentrations, requires only 1-2 ul of sample.
Refrigerated Incubator Shaker, Amerex 747R with spring platform to accommodate a variety of tube and flask sizes.
Incubator Shakers: New Brunswick Scientific C25 and refrigerated shaker, Amerex 747
Wallac 1420 Victor2: Multilabel counter for quantitative detection of light-emitting or light-absorbing markers.

If you have any questions about our facilities, contact Ian McGarvey, our facility manager and scientific instrumentation specialist :

Ian McGarvey