Materials Science in General Chemistry for Freshman Engineering Majors
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Materials Science in General Chemistry for Freshman Engineering Majors David E. Nikles Department of Chemistry, The University of Alabama, Box 870336, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0336, [email protected] ABSTRACT The College of Engineering at the University of Alabama is a member of the Foundation Coalition. We have created a new freshman engineering curriculum that integrates subject matter from calculus, chemistry, physics and general engineering studies courses. To motivate the study of chemistry, materials science themes were incorporated into the general chemistry course sequence. INTRODUCTION General chemistry has been a required course for most engineering majors. However, when you ask engineering faculty why their majors are required to take general chemistry, you get a puzzled look. The most common answer is that ABET requires general chemistry. Except for chemical engineers, the engineering faculty can not give a compelling reason why general chemistry is required. You must understand their perspective. Their only experience with general chemistry was decades ago when they had the unpleasant experience of taking general chemistry. They could not see the relevance then and have trouble seeing the relevance now. As a chemistry professor and an instructor of general chemistry, who wishes to maintain employment for at least another 20 years, this concerns me. General chemistry should be relevant to the one third of my students who are engineering majors. So why should engineers take general chemistry? One answer is that the purpose of college is to educate, not to train. Chemistry is a rigorous physical science that challenges the students to understand with abstract concepts. I find this argument compelling. However, other science courses, particularly physics would provide a similar intellectual challenge. So, why chemistry? My answer is materials. Engineering is about design and the implementation of designs. At some point in the design process, engineer must make decisions about the materials of construction. For the past five years I have been using materials science as a motivation for freshmen engineering students to study chemistry. In this paper I describe how I weave themes of materials science and engineering applications into a two-semester general chemistry sequence. CHEMISTRY FOR THE INTEGRATED CURRICULUM The College of Engineering at the University of Alabama is a member of the Foundation Coalition, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The mission of the Foundation coalition is to reform the engineering curriculum at the freshman and sophomore levels. We have developed an integrated freshman engineering curriculum that incorporates teaming and cooperative learning into Calculus, Chemistry, Physics and General Engineering Studies courses.
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