Removing the Computational Barrier from the Physical Chemistry Curriculum

Brooks Pate, Chemistry

1996 TTI Fellow

Project website:

Home page: http://faculty.virginia.edu/bpate-lab/

Physical Chemistry, or "p-chem," is a subject noted for it's formidable mathematic component. In learning p-chem, students will spend hours among the mathematical trees and have little time to step back and view the forest of the subject itself. One reason for this is the nature of the math involved--partial differential equations are notoriously tedious beasts. Very often students will grasp the reasoning behind a particular set of equations, and why they are being used to solve a particular problem. But the task of doing the actual calculations by hand, even with a calculator, can be so time consuming as to prevent time for much else. In a test situation, this can be counter-productive.With the aid of the program "MathCAD," Brooks Pate has been able to balance the teaching of mathematical tools and chemical principles. With MathCAD, Pate can moderate the amount of calculation that students need to complete, which makes room for the teaching of the principles that guide the use of the mathematical tools. A direct consequence of this approach is that Pate can teach more, both in terms of quality and quantity.Pate is well aware of the pedagogical issues involved in using a labor-saving tool such as MathCAD. The challenge is to create a curriculum in which the tail does not wag the dog. In response, Pate is developing approaches to homework, in-class work and tests that make appropriate use of the program.