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Natural products are ubiquitous in nature but do not form a large proportion of the A-level syllabuses in the UK. In this article we briefly discuss a small selection of natural products, focusing on alcohols, aldehydes and ketones, and alkaloids. We then outline two natural product experiments that are suitable for A-level chemistry clubs or similar. Experiment 1 is the isolation and analysis of caffeine from tea, and Experiment 2 is the extraction and characterisation of a volatile oil, eugenol, from cloves. These experiments include a variety of laboratory techniques, including steam distillation, determination of melting point, thin-layer chromatography and column chromatography, infrared spectroscopy and ultraviolet spectrophotometry.
