ALBERT

Notes: Abstract This article examines a long-dormant teaching methodology known as the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI). The literature documenting the effectiveness of PSI is reviewed, showing that it is superior to traditional instruction. Even given this evidence, few educators employ this instructional strategy today. Arguments against PSI are examined, and suggestions are made on how to avoid the pitfalls associated with PSI. The article also discusses how to implement PSI in a college chemistry course.

Notes: Abstract We all participate in a variety of groups as part of our daily lives, from families to social and work communities. As chemists, we are part of our college departments, our professional societies, our research groups, and so on. In graduate and undergraduate school, some of us formed peer study groups in response to the demands of those other groups that we were a part of: our formal courses. We know we are not unique in this. The popular culture, at least, is filled with portrayals of medical, law, and business students who must divide responsibility for learning a daunting amount of course material and who then teach one another as a part of their learning. Graduate research groups in chemistry are generally highly structured by their research directors where community issues are involved (group meetings and assignments, shared equipment, and representatives who obtain specialized skills such as crystallography or mass spectrometry), and move towards a less authoritative structure when developing individual initiative is the goal. Individuals depend on (and learn with) one another in all kinds of educational situations. In order to emphasize this idea, Bruffee [1] advocates the use of a phrase attributed to John Dewey: “living an associated life.” As Bruffee describes it, formal education in America has been based on a philosophy of associated learning since at least the time of Benjamin Franklin. We all live and learn in an associated way. Differences in interactions vary according to the nature of a group’s structure (and sometimes, although not as often, to an individual’s degree of dissociation from the group).

Notes: Abstract Most chemistry courses involving group theory do not treat the infinite point groups C∞v or D∞h. Even the character tables themselves are not transparent looking, with the profusion of ellipses. Because of this, it is not possible to deduce the vibrational symmetry modes of CO2, even though the symmetric, asymmetric stretch, and doubly-degenerate bending modes are discussed in almost all physical chemistry courses. In this paper we show how linear molecules such as CO2, C2H2, and HCN can be treated using the point groups Cnv or Dnh for general values of n. When determining which irreducible representations comprise the normal vibrational modes of a linear molecule such as CO2, we show that the n-dependence vanishes. The calculations presented here do not require advanced mathematical knowledge and could be incorporated into an undergraduate chemistry curriculum in which group theory is presented.

Notes: Abstract Often neglected as a foundation for scientific inquiry are contemporary sports journals and the articles contained within them. It is common to encounter authoritative assertions by various authors that are in truth ordinary suppositions infrequently based on tenable scientific data. This article outlines a model for transforming an ordinary “factual” statement, taken from a recent sporting journal, into an educational experience that includes experimental design, supporting documentation, methods of experimental verification, and the scientific method as a whole.

Notes: Abstract The potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the development of intelligent machines is widely recognized. It is less widely appreciated that the methods which computer scientists use in their work on AI are also applicable to the solution of numerous problems in science. In many cases, AI methods are preferable to more conventional approaches, being superior in terms of time, quality of solution, or both. Most AI tools are comparatively simple to understand, despite their power, and computer programs to implement them can be written by anyone with average programming skills. This series of papers will demonstrate how AI methods are of value in science, why they work, and how they can be introduced into the syllabus as undergraduate research projects; suggestions of projects, illustrative programs and Java source code will be provided. This paper introduces the topic of AI and explains some of the ways in which an AI program differs from a conventional program.

Notes: Abstract What is the value that comes from consciously and explicitly linking what we know about chemistry with what we do in the classroom? It is tempting to dismiss this question because we are uncomfortable with the implication that there are times when what we do in the classroom is not informed by our personal understanding of chemistry. Yet instructors of introductory chemistry courses often lack the personal understanding, especially the kind that comes from laboratory experience, for significant parts of the course. An experienced general chemistry instructor, for example, probably understands the practical expectations of teaching this subject better than anyone who has recently graduated with a Ph.D. in physical or inorganic chemistry. Although the merits of this situation are worth reflecting on at another time, a reasonable operational assumption is that a substantial portion of the introductory program is defined by its own existence rather than as an identifiable area of specialization. The general chemistry curriculum is flexible to the degree that it can accommodate a variety of backgrounds in its instructors, yet it is constrained by the historical inertia that has defined it. To a lesser yet still significant extent, beginning instructors of organic chemistry face the same problem when their understanding of more specialized topics (such as the synthesis of heterocyclic compounds, transition metal organometallics, carbohydrate and peptide chemistry) is limited by their inexperience in those areas. Organic chemists might have only studied these topics as a part of their own introductory or intermediate instruction, and the textbook in use could be their primary source of information. Consequently, introductory chemistry instruction is filled with its own “urban myths”, or perhaps they are parables [1] passed down from author to author, about chemical phenomena that may or may not stand up to the scrutiny of contemporary understanding. Sometimes this is by design; for instance, demonstrating some general features about macroscopic properties can be done by using simplifications like the ideal gas assumptions or with the use of concentration instead of activity. Intentional simplifications that use less sophisticated models to explain phenomena at an adequate level of complexity are commonplace (in fact, this is not a bad interpretation of Occam’s Razor as it applies to science in general). This may be analogous to the way our colleagues in physics begin college instruction with Newtonian mechanics, or the way chemists can successfully use valence bond models for molecular structure to do a prodigious amount of chemistry without ever invoking a Hamiltonian operator. Problems can arise, however, whenever an instructor’s depth of understanding of a subject is only marginally different than the simplified version of it. Agassi [2] offers a sobering view on the way some writers of introductory textbooks “mislead the innocent reader” (implying that unwary instructors will sometimes mislead learners). He laments that individuals who ultimately choose science do so in spite of their formal education and he refers to them as “those who survive the injury of the science textbook.”

Notes: Abstract A chemical demonstration illustrating pressure volume work is presented. Details are given for the construction of a small but powerful mechanical engine that is fueled with liquid nitrogen. Students are able to disassemble the engine to inspect the engine components and study the operating mechanism.