Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, NMR, is an extremely powerful and complex instrumental technique. This worksheet introduces several important concepts for NMR data acquisition and data processing. Understanding these concepts will help you obtain and process high-quality spectra in the shortest time. Acquisition parameters of the instrument, the basis of quadrature detection, apodization, and zero filling are discussed. This document is suited to an instrumental analysis or spectroscopy course where students optimize NMR data acquisition.

Figure 1. An Introduction to NMR Concepts. The Fourier transform of the real channel produces a real and imaginary spectrum. These are labeled the real spectrum of the real channel and the imaginary spectrum of the real channel.