Teaching General Chemistry Through Materials Science
- PDF / 43,179 Bytes
- 6 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 90 Downloads / 289 Views
Teaching General Chemistry Through Materials Science Elliot P. Douglas Department of Materials Science and Engineering University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611 ABSTRACT We have developed a new Materials Chemistry course for freshmen with the goal of improving retention in the engineering program. This Materials Chemistry course is fundamentally different from other introductory materials courses in that it does not cover the standard introductory materials curriculum (diffusion, strengthening mechanisms, eutectic phase diagrams, etc.). Rather, its goal is to teach engineering applications of fundamental chemistry concepts. This course consists of four basic units: atomic, molecular and supermolecular structures; chemical reactions; physical chemistry; and biological materials. Each of these units consists of topics designed to show how fundamental concepts in chemistry can be applied to engineering problems. For example, liquid crystal display technology is used to teach the concept of molecular shape. The course also contains a laboratory section. This paper will describe the detailed contents of the course and its relation to the engineering curriculum. INTRODUCTION There is a growing awareness of the need to introduce freshmen, who have declared engineering as a major, to engineering concepts. One approach is to create integrated curricula in the freshman year.[1] These curricula attempt to integrate basic science (e.g. chemistry, physics, math) with engineering. The approach may involve individual courses, blocks of courses, or an entire freshman curriculum. Results suggest that these approaches are successful, resulting in higher retention and higher grade point averages. The attractiveness of this approach with regards to materials engineering has been noted in a report from the National Science Foundation,[2] which concludes that "the attractiveness of chemistry and physics…could be enhanced by greater emphasis on materials-related topics which would help students better relate their studies to the 'real world'." With this in mind, we have developed a new course, titled Materials Chemistry. The goal of this course is to provide engineering applications of basic chemistry concepts at the freshman level. This paper describes the role of this course within the engineering curriculum at the University of Florida, a description of the course content, and some preliminary assessment results. ROLE OF THE COURSE The first year of the engineering curriculum at the University of Florida is completely devoted to satisfying general science, writing, and humanities requirements. None of the official tracking for any engineering program contains an engineering course in the freshman year. The first year courses for students majoring in Materials Science and Engineering are provided in Table 1 as an example. There are only two possible means for a student to obtain engineering content in the first year. Some students opt to take Introduction to Engineering. This is a 1 GG5.7.1
credit course in which students visit one
Data Loading...
