CHED 40 |
| Many engineering underclassmen appear not particularly compelled to push electrons, rupture bonds and envision transition states whereby formulaic student memorization persists. These hurdles in synthetic organic chemical education to engineering majors have prompted the utilization of molecular modeling visualization and computational techniques. Molecular modeling of anionic initiation mechanisms via nucleophilic attack is detailed for a variety of organic monomers to sequentially demonstrate monomer susceptibility, transition state structure and thermodynamics. Anionic propagation kinetics were modeled using a computational subroutine as a function of temperature, solvent, impurity concentration, chemical initiator, counter cation identity as well as monomer identity for block copolymerization using facile systems dynamics software. Innovative centimeter-scale computer aided design (CAD) molecular assemblies were constructed, rapid prototyped and animated from energy minimized picometer scale molecular models. In addition, abstract mechanistic organic molecular models were superimposed by students onto recognizable CAD mechanical mechanisms emphasizing repetitive similarities as well as length scale and energy transport differences. |
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Visualization and Learning Chemistry
1:30 PM-4:10 PM, Sunday, April 6, 2008 Hilton New Orleans Riverside -- Melrose, Oral
Division of Chemical Education |