CHED 133 |
| Students often find the physical chemistry laboratory to be a class that looks good – from a distance. Flashy laser experiments may seem appealing. In practice, however, the physical chemistry laboratory course often has a reputation for excessive calculations, tedious error analysis, long laboratory reports, and laboratory experiments that have changed little over two or three decades. We have addressed these issues with new experiments emphasizing modern spectroscopic methods coordinated with computations. As an example we will describe an undergraduate laboratory experiment that measures luminescence lifetimes of erythrosin (Red Dye #3) and eosin. New computational exercises in the laboratory course include semi-emperical and ab initio quantum calculations, normal mode calculations, and molecular dynamics of proteins. Students use HYPERCHEM and GAUSSIAN to compute normal modes of carbon tetrachloride alongside measurements of its FTIR and FT Raman spectra. In addition, we have emphasized developing student skills in scientific communication, including oral presentations. In the second semester laboratory, students write a proposal to plan an independent project for the second half of the course with results presented in a final poster session. We will report on both instructor and student perceptions of the effectiveness of the new laboratory. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the NSF (DUE 0311636) for support of this project. |
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NSF Catalyzed Innovations in the Undergraduate Curriculum
8:30 AM-12:00 PM, Monday, August 20, 2007 Seaport -- Flagship Room, Oral
Division of Chemical Education |