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JCE SymMath: Symbolic Mathematics in Chemistry
Intellectual Property Rights and the Symbolic Mathematics Chemistry Community Previous essays in this column addressed the need for community building and fair use of copyright when creating new digital materials for dissemination (1, 2). Here the ideas presented earlier are extended to the area of intellectual property rights as identified in the general proscription against plagiarism. According to my copy of the Merriam-Webster dictionary, plagiarism is passing off the work of another as one’s own without giving credit to the source. In the academic community plagiarism is considered a serious departure from the scientific ethics of publication and dissemination of ideas. Students are often considered to be the major academic offenders who resort to plagiarism for a variety of reasons including desperation, laziness, or poor understanding of the plagiarism concept. However, scientists and educators are not exempt from falling into the plagiarism trap. Although plagiarism, unlike copyright infringement, is not a criminal offense, it can have severe consequences. For a student these range from a failing grade on a paper, through a failing grade for a course, up to dismissal from school. For faculty the consequences can be equally severe and can go beyond lost reputation and credibility. Plagiarism by a faculty member is a serious breach of scientific ethics. The examples of plagiarism at the faculty level mimic those found for students. Some examples are:
• Placing one’s name in the byline of a document next to the name of the original author when very few, such as minor editing or formatting, or no changes are made to the original document;
• Assigning oneself as the sole author of a departmental- or group-created document;
• Copying whole sentences and paragraphs from Internet sources and using these in class Web pages, PowerPoint presentations, or handouts without citing the original source (interestingly, our Web-savvy students easily find sources of pilfered Web presentations);
• CV padding by republishing previously published works. Most journals reject papers where a certain percentage has been published elsewhere.
There are general references on plagiarism (3, 4). One can also refer to various university and college student and faculty handbooks for local precise definitions and consequences of plagiarism. Avoiding plagiarism is an essential feature of the respect for the intellectual property rights of others in our scientific and symbolic mathematics communities. The concern over plagiarism may be discouraging potential authors from creating and publishing documents that build or extend existing materials in the SymMath collection. This is where the community building aspect supporting the collection becomes important. The wide variety of documents in the SymMath collection supports the education of students across a broad spectrum of learning levels, particularly in physical chemistry. Potential contributors can help build the community in several ways.
edited by
Theresa Julia Zielinski
Monmouth University West Long Branch, NJ 07764-1898
1. Contribute an original symbolic mathematics engine (SME) instructional document. There is a need for documents that fill gaps in the spectrum of activities that span the curriculum. One can peruse the generic table of contents on the left side of the screen at http://bluehawk.monmouth.edu/tzielins/mathcad/ index.htm (accessed Sep 2008) to identify gaps in the available materials. Electrochemistry and multi-electronic systems are two examples of general areas that need digital support documents. Original documents can be complete instructional modules (learning objects), or shorter treatments of one topic (learning assets) (5). A collection of learning assets might look like the calculus collection at http://bluehawk.monmouth.edu/~tzielins/ mathcad/RPoshusta/doc003.htm (accessed Sep 2008).
2. Contribute translations of existing Mathcad documents into Maple or Mathematica formats. Acknowledgment of translations is published in the print issues of the Journal of Chemical Education and the full active translated SME documents and PDF files are made available through JCE Online. Such contributions may count as disseminated scholarship of teaching.
3. Update and expand existing collection documents. If you wish to update a module, contact the original author for permission or to collaborate on the update. An example of expansion is the Autocatalytic Reaction document, originally written by Joe Noggle; the expanded document is at http://bluehawk.monmouth. edu/~tzielins/mathcad/tjz/doc012.htm (accessed Sep 2008).
4. Create a mashup from existing objects, assets, or data. A SymMath mashup would be a new digital teaching resource, with enhanced pedagogical value, created by combining two or more independent digital objects or media types. One type of mashup might be created by a team of authors where each author contributes portions of the module. This type would have all contributors as coauthors. Another type of mashup brings different components from various sources, such as those found on the WWW or in NSDL repositories. In this case the author(s) must provide clear citations of the source of the mashup components and obtain all necessary copyright permissions. The citations in the document would clearly permit users to trace back the sources as is appropriate in scientific writing. JCE resources provide a wide spectrum of assets that can be used when creating SymMath mashup learning objects. One needs to write to JCE to obtain permission to use any archived JCE digital object or asset in a mashup creation of a new module that adds pedagogical value to the treatment of a topic.
The intellectual creativity of colleagues needs protection by all authors. In general the most important safeguard that an author can use to protect the intellectual property rights of others is providing complete and well documented citations to all sources of information used when developing a learning object or asset. Data sources, image sources, etc. should have citations and copyright permissions before publication or dissemination via the WWW. Scrupulous citation provides a means by which others who want to use the materials later can do so in full knowledge of the intellectual property ownership of the
© Division of Chemical Education • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 85 No. 12 December 2008 • Journal of Chemical Education
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materials (and therefore can request permission to use the items that are copyrighted). Usually such permission is forthcoming from the JCE if the use is noncommercial—especially if the final product will be contributed to the JCE for publication. New This Month In this SymMath column we introduce three new documents and three translations of previously published documents. The new documents focus on real gases, NMR calculations, and mathematical methods for chemists. Evaluating Volumetric and Other Thermodynamic Properties by Means of Cubic Equations of State In the first document, Evaluating Volumetric and Other Thermodynamic Properties by Means of Cubic Equations of State, Suárez and Coto use Maple to present an overview of the behavior of real gases as represented by the ideal gas, the Van der Waals, and the Soave, Redlich, and Kwong equations of state. Compressibility, fugacity, fugacity coefficient, and residual enthalpy calculations are completed for each equation of state and comparisons made. Throughout the document students are engaged in analysis of the equations of state by completing plots and calculations. Determining the degree of agreement of the three functions to real gas data under different conditions of temperature and pressure focuses student attention in a way that is more compelling compared to reading the same information in a text. The document is appropriate for use with typical physical chemistry students in upper-level college chemistry courses. Graduate students and faculty would find the document a useful resource for teaching this topic. Maple-Assisted Template for Automatic Calculation of Second Order AA′XX′ NMR Spectra In Maple-Assisted Template for Automatic Calculation of Second Order AA′XX′ NMR Spectra, Scarlete and colleagues make use of Maple’s power as a computational tool and plot generator to study the NMR spectrum of AA′XX′ NMR systems. In the template the authors show how to calculate the coupling constants and chemical shifts from frequencies and relative peak intensities. Going from the coupling constants and the chemical shifts leads to frequencies and relative intensities. Both are illustrated in this template. The authors state that the template “only works for theoretical AA′XX′ spectra with identical, evenly spaced pairs of peaks”. The document is well annotated so that the calculation of each component is clear. The document would be an excellent resource in courses where the details of spectroscopy are analyzed. The authors also recommend that faculty can use the template to create lecture demonstrations or to assign to students to use as part of a dry lab focused on the interpretation of NMR spectra. Introductory Explorations of the Fourier Series The final document in this collection is Introductory Explorations of the Fourier Series by Theresa Julia Zielinski. This Mathcad document was designed to provide students with practice using the Fourier series. Although many students have had instruction in this and other series in math classes, they are not facile with the concept and don’t have the time to compute the coefficients and do real curve fitting with the Fourier series. In this document students explore the orthonormal property of the components of the Fourier series, compute the fitting 1706
coefficients required by the Fourier series, and apply these to the fit of a Fourier series to a step function, a straight line, and a parabolic function. In this way they have experience with both even and odd functions and are ready to learn about other uses for expansions, for example basis sets in ab initio calculations. The document is suitable for inclusion in the standard first quantum chemistry course at the undergraduate level. Instructors can easily modify the document to include other examples of Fourier series expansions. Maple Translations Three Maple translations complete the collection for this column. All three were prepared by Charles G. James, Jr., Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina at Asheville. The documents were published in the first SymMath column in 1998 (6) and include
• The Iodine Spectrum
• Vibronic Spectra of Diatomic Molecules and the Birge– Sponer Extrapolation
• Exploring the Morse Potential
Literature Cited 1. Zielinski, T. J. J. Chem. Educ. 2006, 83, 1724. 2. Zielinski, T. J. J. Chem. Educ. 2005, 82, 172. 3. New Jersey State Bar Foundation. What You Should Know About Plagiarism. http://www.njsbf.org/images/content/1/1/11085/Plagiarism07_final.pdf (accessed, Sep 2008). 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism (accessed Sep 2008). 5. Zielinski, T. J. J. Chem. Educ. 2005, 82, 1099. 6. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 1189–1192.
Supporting JCE Online Material
http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/Issues/2008/Dec/abs1705.html Abstract and keywords Full text (PDF) with links to cited URLs and JCE articles Supplements
Find each document and translation of previously published documents mentioned here along with their summaries in the SymMath collection of the JCE Digital Library at http://www.jce.divched.org/JCEDLib/SymMath/collection/index.php
Evaluating Volumetric and Other Thermodynamic Properties by Means of Cubic Equations of State summary and Maple document at http://www. jce.divched.org/JCEDLib/SymMath/collection/article.php?id=60
Maple-Assisted Template for Automatic Calculation of Second Order AA’XX’ NMR Spectra summary and Maple document at http://www. jce.divched.org/JCEDLib/SymMath/collection/article.php?id=61
Introductory Explorations of the Fourier Series summary and Mathcad document at http://www.jce.divched.org/JCEDLib/SymMath/collection/ article.php?id=62
Originally published Mathcad version and summary of The Iodine Spectrum with the Maple translation document at http://www.jce.divched.org/ JCEDLib/SymMath/collection/article.php?id=5
Originally published Mathcad version and summary of Vibronic Spectra of Diatomic Molecules and the Birge-Sponer Extrapolation with the Maple translation document at http://www.jce.divched.org/JCEDLib/ SymMath/collection/article.php?id=4
Originally published Mathcad version and summary of Exploring the Morse Potential with the Maple translation document at http://www.jce. divched.org/JCEDLib/SymMath/collection/article.php?id=1
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 85 No. 12 December 2008 • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • © Division of Chemical Education
