Guided Inquiry Physical Chemistry Labortory

近年来，广泛的努力已经花费在开发开放性的，探究式的，实验室练习的介绍性，大学水平的化学课程。这些努力的一个主要目标是培养学生对化学相互作用的概念和分子水平的认识。具有讽刺意味的是，物理化学的最新进展对这一分子水平的图景做出了重大贡献，然而典型的物理化学实验室练习仍然和几十年前一样。设备的成本只是这个年代的原因之一。另外两个重要的原因是缺乏基于前沿问题的实验，以及缺乏管理探究式实验室的经验。拟议的工作解决了这两个国家的问题。目标是通过在不到百万美元的预算下创建一套反映当前实践的真实世界、探究式实验来重组物理化学实验课程。通过关注几个领域来保持适度的成本：材料表面化学、生物化学、环境化学和电化学。材料化学最初可能看起来是这个任务的一个不寻常的选择，因为现代表面实验通常在使用昂贵的技术方面是极端的。拟议的项目通过采用量子点来规避费用问题：量子点是一种尖端材料，可以通过吸附、发光、FTIR、光腐蚀和化学衍生等光谱技术进行检测。课程以实验组完成，强调生物化学实验，以吸引那些对医学感兴趣的人，环境实验，以环境研究成分，和电化学，以吸引工程师。由于目前没有可用的实验文本支持开放式实验，因此一个可交付的内容是文本。为了向其他机构宣传这项工作的成果，我们建议举办讲习班，为潜在的教师提供具体的经验。这些研讨会的特点是塔夫茨大学教师对家庭机构进行后续访问。与参与者的这种持续接触预计将大大提高这项工作的传播成功率。

In recent years, extensive efforts have been expended to develop open-ended, inquiry-based, laboratory exercises for introductory, college-level chemistry courses. A major goal of these efforts is to develop the student's conceptual, molecular-level picture of chemical interactions. Ironically, it is recent advances in physical chemistry that have made a major contribution to this molecular level picture, yet typical physical chemistry laboratory exercises remain much as they were several decades ago. The cost of the equipment is only one reason for this dating. Two other significant reasons are a scarcity of experiments based on cutting edge problems, and a lack of experience with running an inquiry-based laboratory. The proposed work addresses both of these national problems. The objective is to restructure physical chemistry laboratory courses by creating a set of real-world, inquiry-based experiments that reflect current practice on a less-than-million-dollar budget. Costs are kept modest by focusing on several areas: materials surface chemistry, biochemistry, environmental chemistry, and electrochemistry. Materials chemistry might initially appear to be an unusual choice for this mission since modern surface experiments are often extreme in utilization of expensive techniques. The proposed project circumvents the expense issue by featuring quantum dots: Cutting-edge materials which are examined with spectroscopic techniques such as adsorption, luminescence, FTIR, photocorrosion, and chemical derivatization. The courses are completed with groups of experiments highlighting biochemical experiments to appeal to those with medical interests, environmental experiments for the environmental studies constituent, and electrochemistry to appeal to engineers. Since none of the currently available laboratory texts support open-ended experiments, one deliverable is a text. In order to propagate the results of this work to other institutions, we propose offering workshops to give potential faculty concrete experience. These workshops feature follow-up visits to the home institution by Tufts University faculty. This ongoing contact with participants is expected to substantially increase the success of dissemination of this work.