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What is Analytical Chemistry?

Mary Elizabeth
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Updated: Feb 02, 2024
Views: 31,036
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Analytical chemistry is the study of matter in order to reveal its composition, structure, and extent. Because these understandings are fundamental in just about every chemical inquiry, this field is used to obtain information, ensure safety, and solve problems in many different chemical areas, and is essential in both theoretical and applied chemistry.

Early analytical chemistry was mainly focused on identifying elements and compounds and discovering their attributes. Discovery gave way to systematic analysis, which took a giant step forward with the invention in the 1850’s of the first instrument for chemical analysis—flame emissive spectrometry—by Robert Bunsen, a German chemist who is better known for his invention of the Bunsen burner, and his colleague Gustav Kirchoff, a German physicist who is known for his 1862 coining the name "black body" radiation for an object that absorbs all of the electromagnetic radiation that reaches it.

Other separation processes were developed, including various kinds of chromatography such as paper, gas, and liquid; electrophoresis; crystallography; microfiltration; and other spectrometers, including atomic absorption spectrometers, infrared spectrometers, and mass spectrometers. Other changes in the field took place, for example, the extension of analytical chemistry allowing for bioanalytical chemistry to develop. Bioanalytics includes areas such as genomics, lipidomics, metabolomics, peptidomics, proteomics, and transcriptomics.

The traditional subdivisions of analytical chemistry followed the same paradigm as in statistical analysis: a qualitative approach that was focused on determining what elements and/or compounds were present and a quantitative approach that aimed to establish the precise amount of an element or compound in a given sample. Either, or both, of these approaches can be applied to materials in a variety of fields, including the food and beverage industry, the pharmaceutical industry, synthetic materials such as polymers, and natural materials, such as minerals and water samples. As the field grew, analytical chemistry also broadened to embrace applications of its techniques in forensics, and medicine.

Analytical chemists today use a wide variety of techniques in their analyses, including some involving robotics, digital microscopes, a Fourier transform infrared spectophotometers, chip-based technology, and chemometrics, for example. They also use techniques in which technologies are combined, resulting in approaches referred to as hyphenated or hybrid techniques, characteristically referred to by initials. Examples include CE-MS—capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry; GC-MS—gas chromatography-mass spectrometry; CE-UV—capillary electrophoresis-ultraviolet; and HPLC/ESI-MS—high performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry.

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Mary Elizabeth
By Mary Elizabeth
Passionate about reading, writing, and research, Mary Elizabeth is dedicated to correcting misinformation on the Internet. In addition to writing articles on art, literature, and music for WiseGeek, Mary works as a teacher, composer, and author who has written books, study guides, and teaching materials. Mary has also created music composition content for Sibelius Software. She earned her B.A. from University of Chicago's writing program and an M.A. from the University of Vermont.

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Discussion Comments
By croydon — On May 01, 2012

@KoiwiGal - I've always associated analytical chemistry with forensic science. I mean, the most famous (fictional) forensic scientist of all is Sherlock Holmes and he would often use analytical chemistry equipment and techniques in order to determine, for example, what kind of soil was found at a crime scene, or the sort of tobacco leaves the suspect use.

And they still use it today. In fact I imagine most of the job is using analytical chemistry.

They also use it in environmental analysis, like to look for pollution in water or in animal or plant tissue.

By KoiwiGal — On Apr 30, 2012

Analytical chemistry is one of the basic things kids do at school when they are first starting chemistry, or even general science.

I can remember being given a gas (usually mixing a couple of chemicals in order to get the gas through a reaction) and being told to identify the gas through a series of experiments. That's analytical chemistry.

Later on analytical chemistry became chromatography demonstrations and other more advanced techniques. These are the ones that have a more practical use and are actually used in real research. Scientists use chromatography to figure out what kinds of chemicals are present in different plants or to separate the different pigments they need for particular work.

It's actually a really good thing to do with kids as the pigments are pretty striking when they separate out.

By anon63890 — On Feb 04, 2010

useful, however could you list examples of where analytical chemistry is used, to make it more useful to science people.

By anon60059 — On Jan 11, 2010

very helpful but some examples would be nice also.

By anon39237 — On Jul 31, 2009

it is a very very useful site for science (school) students.

Mary Elizabeth
Mary Elizabeth
Passionate about reading, writing, and research, Mary Elizabeth is dedicated to correcting misinformation on the...
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