Efforts have been made for a well directed approach in these exercises for our learners, more like a real-life laboratory situation. Many students/learners do lab course experiments without the understanding of background needed to design a simple experiment. They lack the sense of where to start. What volume of reagents should be prepared? What concentration? Should temperature and ionic strength be controlled? What about the pH of a reaction? What is an adequate control? This lack of experience in identifying the basic elements of an experimental design often results in the failure to perform the experiment successfully. We have tried to develop these lab exercises keeping in mind what learner do, learner will also have to think through on his/her own. Learner will have to adapt procedures to the particular experiment being performed or the equipment which is available for use. These lab exercises will help each learner to complete the experiment, analyze the data and write laboratory report in a fixed time period.

Each practical exercise begins with the ‘Introduction’ about the experiment in which theory and relevance have been discussed so that one can understand fully the importance of experiment beforehand. Protocols are covered in detail explaining how to take observations followed by calculations. Precautions to be taken while performing experiment, have invariably been included under each practical exercise. Attention has also been drawn to careful handling of chemicals, and the erroneous measurements creeping in methods described for different experiments.