[Il Divo]

Greetings all. Recently, I've been taking a greater look into Spectroscopy techniques and am finding them very interesting. I'm very familiar in employing UV-VIS especially, but also have some experience with FTIR.  two things I was curious about:

1) How much overlap is there between UV-VIS/FTIR Spectroscopy and Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission/Absorption Spectroscopy? Would someone who is fairly familiar with the former have much difficulty in successfully working with the latter?

2) How much overlap is there between the analytical techniques of these different instruments? UV-VIS relies heavily on the Beer-Lambert Law. Is it similarly straightforward to perform analysis for ICP-AES and AAS by comparison?

Thanks in advance.

[Corribus]

1) How much overlap is there between UV-VIS/FTIR Spectroscopy and Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission/Absorption Spectroscopy? Would someone who is fairly familiar with the former have much difficulty in successfully working with the latter?

To answer the first question: practically none. ICP-AES is purely a analytical technique. The fact that it is spectral information is coincidental.  UV-Vis has analytical applications, but it is measuring something completely different. 

To answer the second: the techniques are very different. ICP-AES is far more demanding in the area of sample preparation and method development. That's not to say you can't learn it, but being an expert in UV-Vis won't automatically make you an expert in ICP-AES, if that's what you're asking.

2) How much overlap is there between the analytical techniques of these different instruments? UV-VIS relies heavily on the Beer-Lambert Law. Is it similarly straightforward to perform analysis for ICP-AES and AAS by comparison?

First, ICP-AES is an emission (fluorescence) technique, so Beer's Law is irrelevant practically by default.  The sample type is also completely different.  Concentrations are determined using elemental standards. A better comparison would be spectrofluorimetry, but the techniques are so different in what they measure and how they operate that even here the comparison is a poor one.

EDIT: Didn't notice your mention of AAS on first pass. AAS is an absorption technique and here Beer's Law is relevant.  So I suppose you could say there are some similarities between UV-Vis and AAS, but again I stress that these techniques are used to determine very different things. AAS is also kind of a dying technology; I hesitate to call it a waste of time to learn it, but ICP-AES, or better: ICP-MS, would be probably a better investment of your energy if you are interested in this kind of thing.