Chemical €ducation: Soft Abstract KC? Discoverer: the Properties of the Chemical Elements Aw Feng, John W. Moore, Wllllam Harwood, and Robert Gayhart Project SERAPHIM Eastern Mlchbgan Untverstty MI 48197 Yps~lant~,
"KC? Discoverer" has been designed to allow students and faculty t o explbre a large number of properties of the elements. Included in the data base are: chemical properties, suchas reaction when heated in air; physical properties,such as density or melting point; and microscopic properties, such as ionization energy or electron affinity. "KC? Discoverer" n closely coordinated with the periodic table and can be used very effectively in introductory as well as advanced courses where descr~ptiveinorganic chemistry is taught. The promam ran: ------- ~ . - ~ ~ FIND all elements that have a specified rahge of values for a selected property, highlight those elements on a periodic table, and display values of nearly 50 properties of each element selected, GRAPH any numeric property on the X axis against ahY other property (or any two properties combined using addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division) on the Y axis, enlarge partions of the graph, and display X, Y data pairs for any specified element, LIST (in atomic-number order) name'symhol,atomic number, and up to four other properties for all elements or for a set of elements that all lie within a selected range of one property, SORT all elements, or only those that lie within a selected range of one property, in increasing alphahetic or numeric order of that property and list in a table the name, symbol. atomic number, sorted property, andone other property, and use the periodic TABLE to select elements by period or group and then graphor sort properties;graphsfor several groups or periods can he su~erimposedfor comparison and then enlarged; X,Yvalues can-hedisplayed. Instructors can block certain data so that students cannot
see it. This allows the program to provide data that can be internolated to nredict values for blocked elements. For exampie, students'can he placed in Mendeleev's position and asked to predict properties of undiscovered elements if all elements discovered since 1869 are hlocked. The program has been designed to facilitate student explorations; discovering the many features it makes available is part of its charm. Data have been carefully selected from the literature and edited for cohsistency and accuracy. Written documentation includes a tutorial for those learning to use the program, as well as three sections for mstrnctors only. These latter explain how selected data can be blocked so that students cannot see them, provide a series of exercises that can he assigned to students, and suggest effective uses of the Droeram.
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About This Issue: "KC? Discoverer" John W. Moore, Issue Editor Eastern Mlchtgan University ~~silanti, MI 48197 The single program in this issue, "KC? Discoverer", represents anew approach to the problem of dealing with descriptive chemistry. Instead of drill or rote memorization of facts, the program provides several means by which (or faculty) can explore and discover information ahout the elements. Its user interface consists of menus from which selections can he made, thus encouraging exploration of the data base and making it possible to learn touse the program much external help, It has several persons to support sophomore inorganic courses as well as general chemistry, and suggestions from these persons have heen incorporated into the version published here. The accompanying workbook, written hy william Harwood, Elizaheth A. Moore, John W. Moore, and Tamar Y. Susskind, includes many student exercises that weresuggested by and/ or developed by reviewers of the program. Hardware Requirements "KC? Discoverer" runs under MS-DOS and is supplied on two 5.25-in. disks. It makes effective use of either a floppydisk system or a hard-disk system. The floppy-disk version requires two 5.25-in. drives (or one 3.5-in drive-in this case you will have to copy both 5.25-in. disks to a single 3.5-in. disk). At least 320K RAM and DOS version 3.0 or higher are also required. The hard-dlsk version requires a computer with one hard disk and one floppy drive (the latter only to load the program). At least 256K of RAM and DOS version 2.1 or higher are also requ~red. For either version the computer must be equipped with a color graphics adapter (CGA), enhanced graphics adapter (EGA), or video graphics array (VGA), and i t is desirable to have a printer that can print graphics screens from the PC using the PrtSc key. Since many aspects of the program are useful for lecture presentation, large monitors, overhead projection units, or color video projectorsi may also he useful.
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J. Chem Educ: Software 1988, 1A(1), 16-24
Volume 65 Number 6
August 1988
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