edited by BiRK
JAMES P.
A Computer Program for Descriptive Inorganic Chemistry John C. Kotz State University of New York, College at Oneonta, Oneonta, NY 13820 The teachine of descrintive inoreanic chemistw is currently the top; of considerable di&ssion ( 1 4 ) since the recent American Chemical Societv curricular aidelines require more emphasis on this topi; before the &a], juniorlevel course in phvsical chemistry.' Proiect SERAPHIM has recently d e v e ~ & ~ae tool d for teaching some aspects of descriptive inorganic chemistry, a computer program called "KC? Discoverer: Exploring the Periodic Table" (7L2s3 This program is an interactive data base of chemical information, a "CRC Handbook on disk", and i t bas been used successfully for several years in a new sophomore-level course, Descriptive Inorganic Chemistry, a t the State University of .~ an early version of the New York a t O n e ~ n t a Although nroeram was oreviouslv discussed in a brief note in this t i e intentbf the present article is to describe >o&nal (9), the functions of the final version of KC? Discoverer in more detail and to indicate how they can assist in teaching descriptive inorganic chemistry. The data base for KC? Discoverer contains 49 different nieces of information for each of the first 103elements (Fig. 1).The computer presents the information for each element in a series of three screens. The first of these, as illustrated for carbon in Fieure 2a. consists of macrosconic . .~ r o. ~ e r t i e s such as melting ioint, hardness, and condu~tivity.~ Furthermore, this screen lists some useful information on reactivity: ~
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Descriptive inorganic chemistry was the subject of two recant symposia, one at the Southwest Regional American Chemical Society meeting. Little Rock. Arkansas. November 1987. and another at the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, Purdue University. Lafayette. Indiana. July 31-August 4. 1988. Aspects of this paper were presented in each of these symposia. The name of the program comes from its original conception as a "knowledgeable counseior", in which the user would be assisted in answering questions to "discover" new concepts and correlations. The version of the program now available does not contain this function,but this capability is currently under development. The computer program is now supplemented with a 30-min videodisc from Project SERAPHIM that includes pictures of the elements; motion sequences of the reactions (if any) of each element with air. water. acids, and bases; and still pictures of some uses of each element (4. %t present, the course has two one-hour lectures per week with occasional iaboratorv work. Thus far it has focused on the chemistry -~~~~ of the elements. ari&arilv ~, those of the main orouos. No newtheoreticai concepts are introduced beyond those appropriatefor the usual freshman-level course. in addition to chemistry majors, the course has anracted some geology and biology ma;ors interested in a minor in chemistry. SThe figures in this paper were printed using the (shift) (print screen) function available on IBMcompatibie computer systems.
750
Journal of Chemical Education
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