Subject learning mechanisms

The educational literature stresses the importance of having clear justification and aims for the laboratory work. Reid and Shah (2007) suggest laboratory work should have 4 broad aims skills related to learning the subject (soil mechanics), practical (professional)... 

Chemistry can be divided (somewhat arbitrarily) into the study of structures, equilibria, and rates. Chemical structure is ultimately described by the methods of quantum mechanics equilibrium phenomena are studied by statistical mechanics and thermodynamics and the study of rates constitutes the subject of kinetics. Kinetics can be subdivided into physical kinetics, dealing with physical phenomena such as diffusion and viscosity, and chemical kinetics, which deals with the rates of chemical reactions (including both covalent and noncovalent bond changes). Students of thermodynamics learn that quantities such as changes in enthalpy and entropy depend only upon the initial and hnal states of a system consequently thermodynamics cannot yield any information about intervening states of the system. It is precisely these intermediate states that constitute the subject matter of chemical kinetics. A thorough study of any chemical reaction must therefore include structural, equilibrium, and kinetic investigations. 

Carbonyl reactions are extremely important in chemistry and biochemistry, yet they are often given short shrift in textbooks on physical organic chemistry, partly because the subject was historically developed by the study of nucleophilic substitution at saturated carbon, and partly because carbonyl reactions are often more difhcult to study. They are generally reversible under usual conditions and involve complicated multistep mechanisms and general acid/base catalysis. In thinking about carbonyl reactions, 1 find it helpful to consider the carbonyl group as a (very) stabilized carbenium ion, with an O substituent. Then one can immediately draw on everything one has learned about carbenium ion reactivity and see that the reactivity order for carbonyl compounds ... 

It is useful to get preliminary learning on the mechanical properties of materials under simple static tension. Members of engineering structures are often subjected to steady axial loads in tension. Moreover, the response of materials subjected to other types of loading also can often be explained or predicted on the basis of knowledge of their behaviour under simple tension. In addition, such behaviour is usually quite easy to study experimentally. 

Actually, the first attempts to use the electron density rather than the wave function for obtaining information about atomic and molecular systems are almost as old as is quantum mechanics itself and date back to the early work of Thomas, 1927 and Fermi, 1927. In the present context, their approach is of only historical interest. We therefore refrain from an in-depth discussion of the Thomas-Fermi model and restrict ourselves to a brief summary of the conclusions important to the general discussion of DFT. The reader interested in learning more about this approach is encouraged to consult the rich review literature on this subject, for example by March, 1975, 1992 or by Parr and Yang, 1989. 

The mechanisms of permanganate oxidations have been the subject of a fairly intensive study which has now lasted for almost a century. While many of these studies were carried out in aqueous solutions, much of what was learned is also germane to an understanding of the reactions which occur in phase transfer assisted reactions. Although most of these studies are interrelated they can conveniently be discussed under the following headings products, substituent effects, isotope effects, and solvent effects, with the latter being of particular importance to the phase transfer assisted reactions. 

An alert young scientist with only an elementary background in his or her field might be surprised to learn that a subject called thermodynamics has any relevance to chemistry, biology, material science, and geology. The term thermodynamics, when taken literally, implies a field concerned with the mechanical action produced by heat. Lord Kelvin invented the name to direct attention to the dynamic nature of heat and to contrast this perspective with previous conceptions of heat as a type of fluid. The name has remained, although the applications of the science are much broader than when Kelvin created its name. 

Even with the assurance that quantum mechanics has firm underpinnings in experimental observations, students learning this subject for the first time often encounter difficulty. Therefore, it is useful to again examine some of the model problems for which the Schrodinger equation can be exactly solved and to learn how the above rules apply to such concrete examples. 

While the authors of these papers were typically motivated to improve quantum mechanics by clarifying some particular aspect or by making the subject more palatable, their recommendations were seldom supported by any research on the teaching and learning of quantum mechanics. The trend toward research on the educational aspects of advanced topics such as quantum mechanics is a recent one (2-6). 

Principles of Biochemical Toxicology, Fourth Edition thoroughly explains dose-response relationships, disposition and metabolism, and toxic responses to foreign compounds, and presents detailed examples to make the mechanisms of toxicity more accessible to students encountering the subject for the first time. Comprehensive in scope with a clear and concise approach, the text includes summary sections, questions and model answers, and thoroughly revised artwork that serves as an essential aid to learning and teaching. 

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