Active learning physical chemistry

Towns and Grant (161) studied cooperative learning activities in physical chemistry, in particular in a graduate-level thermodynamics course. Their purpose was to describe the structure of events during these activities. The findings showed that students were moved away from rote learning strategies... 

Towns, M., Grant, E. (1998). I believe I will go out of this class actually knowing something Cooperative learning activities in physical chemistry. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 34, 819-835. 

Active and cooperative learning methods are consistent with social/cultural constructivism, provide a better learning enviromnent and contribute to deeper understanding and development of learning skills (Duncan-Hewitt, Mount, Apple, 1995 Johnson, Johnson, Smith, 1991). This form of learning is traditionally used in laboratory work. It was also used in the project-emiched physical chemistry laboratoiy described above (Tsaparlis Gorezi, 2005 2007). 

Probably an example and problems derived from the carbon dioxide-blood buffer system in humans should be in every physical chemistry course. What a rich, complex example this is from Henry s law for the solubility of carbon dioxide in water (blood) to buffer capacity, that is, the rate of change of the law of mass action with proton concentration. The example can be expanded to include nonideal solutions and activities. How many physical chemistry courses use this wonderful and terribly relevant to life example First-year medical students learn this material. 

In discussing physical chemistry curriculum revision we voiced many of the same concerns that are detailed in the New Traditions Physical Chemistry Curriculum Planning Session Report (7). Our new curriculum attempts to address specifically the concerns regarding math preparation, course content, active learning, writing skills, and appropriate utilization of the laboratory course to enhance learning. 

Hinde, R. J., Kovac. J. (2001) Student active learning in physical chemistry. J. Chem. Educ. 78, 93-99... 

The characterization and utilization of photochemical processes are rapidly developing into one of the major areas of activity in modern inorganic and physical chemistry. In the past, the photochemistry of classical metal coordination complexes has received the greatest amount of attention, but recently the photochemistry of organometallic compounds has attracted notice In particular, the photochemistry and photophysics of uranyl compounds have been investigated for more than four decades and a great deal has been learned about the primary photoprocesses and the photo-induced reaction mechanisms displayed by these complexes (.3,4). The popularity of uranyl compounds in photochemical studies is derived from their ready availability and stability, their facile redox chemistry and photosensitivity and their rich excited state chemistry. Since current reviews of uranyl photochemistry are expected to appear in the near future, vide infra, further discussion of this topic here will be limited. 

The Chemistry of Life course incorporates active learning methods, including computational molecular modeling, simulations, experiments, and student papers and presentations. As described below, activities have been designed that use commercial software packages to enable students to visualize chemical and physical processes that influence and support life. 

In the last section of this chapter we shall present quite unconventional methods for the learning of chemistry. Examples will be outlined illustrating how these methods can be used to activate the students learning of essential chemistry. In the first two examples we will discuss how physical interpretations can help students to better understand the particulate nature of matter, and how drama can be used to learn about the nature of science. The other two examples will discuss the idea of role-playing and mimicking authentic social practices to understand about how chemistiy is handled in and by the society. 

We sincerely hope that this book is immensely beneficial to graduate students and researchers to learn the fundamental aspects of cavitation and to launch new research activities in the sonochemistry research field. The readers will also realize that sonochemistry is not just limited to chemistry but has the potential to incorporate in other areas including physics, engineering, biochemistry and medicine. 

One may think of an iterative model for the preclinical discovery screening cycle. A large number of compounds are to be mined for compounds that are active for example, that bind to a particular target. The compounds may come from different sources such as vendor catalogues, corporate collections, or combinatorial chemistry projects. In fact, the compounds need only to exist in a virtual sense, because in silico predictions in the form of a model can be made in a virtual screen (Section 8) which can then be used to decide which compounds should be physically made and tested. A mapping from the structure space of compounds to the descriptor space or property space provides covariates or explanatory variables that can be used to build predictive models. These models can help in the selection process, where a subset of available molecules is chosen for the biological screen. The experimental results of the biological screen (actives and inactives, or numeric potency values) are then used to learn more about the structure-activity relationship (SAR) which leads to new models and a new selection of compounds as the cycle renews. 

It is often interesting and instructive to read the original papers describing important discoveries in your field of interest. Two Web sites. Selected Classic Papers from the History of Chemistry and Classic Papers from the History of Chemistry (and Some Physics too), present many original papers or their translations for those who wish to explore pioneering work in chemistry. To learn about early work on the subject of this chapter, use your Web browser to connect to http //cheniistry.brookscole.coni/ skoogfac/. From the Chapter Resources Menu, choose Web Works. Locate the Chapter 10 section. Click on the link to one of the Web sites just listed. Locate the link to the famous 1923 paper by Debye and Hiickel on the theory of electrolytic solutions and click on it. Read the paper and compare the notation in the paper to the notation in this chapter. What symbol do the authors use for the activity coefficient What important phenomena do the authors relate to their theory Note that the mathematical details are missing from the translation of the paper. 

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