The HATR accessory for the FTIR Spectrometer tests the IR absorbance of various solids, semi-liquids, and even volatile liquids, by <quote>bouncing</quote> IR radiation off of a substance through a crystal with a high refractive index and a large spectral range. Hampden-Sydney owns a FTIR insturment with the HATR accessory, and the following describes a two basic HATR-IR experiments, one which obtains the spectra of a liquid (Olive Oil) and the other which obtains the spectra of a solid (parafilm) so that future HATR-IR experiments can be accomplished by following the same (or a similar) procedure.
