The Cover: Impact of Materials Science

This month's cover is taken from our Viewpoints paper on materials chemistry by Ellis and his coworkers (page 297 *). They use the computer and its component parts as a means of assessing the tremendous advances in materials science and the impact they have had on our lives. For example, we can now make circuit components so small that the number of transistors on the silicon wafer shown on the cover is more than the number of humans on the earth.

Materials chemistry is a wide-open field with advances coming so fast that it is hard to keep up. The group reports that during the approximately four months while they were working on their paper, several advances in integrated circuits and other technologies occurred that made parts of what they had written obsolete. Many other breakthroughs are likely to have occurred between the time we went to press and now.

Related to the Viewpoints paper are this month's JCE Classroom Activity (page 312A *) and the paper by Lagally on quantum dots (page 277 *). In the Classroom Activity, students experiment with a TV or computer monitor screen to reveal important insights regarding color and our perception of it. Lagally's paper deals with nanoscale electronic devices that may some day replace the transistors that are the basis of contemporary computer circuits in the same way that transistors replaced vacuum tubes.

Chemical Instrumentation

Another area in which one advance is always following on the heels of another is chemical instrumentation. Steehler (page 274 *) points out that there is controversy regarding when and how much instrumentation should be introduced into the curriculum. He argues for introducing it early - in the first-year course. If this is done widely, it may well have implications for secondary school teachers as well. In a two-part contribution to our Topics in Chemical Instrumentation column, Copper (page 343) gives the theoretical and experimental background for capillary electrophoresis and Copper and Whitaker (page 347) describe important applications of this relatively new instrumental technique. Van Bramer (page 375) has developed a number of Mathcad documents that simulate the output of instruments as a function of settings of input parameters. These are designed to provide a broader range of experience for students who usually have time for only a few runs on the real instrument.

Notestein et al. (page 360) have developed a qualitative GC experiment using selective photoionization detectors for an instrumental analysis course. Heffner and coworkers (page 365) describe the use of cyclic voltammetry to determine substituent effects in the one-electron reduction of benzoquinones. Yu (page 316) describes a demonstration that illustrates the principle on which inductively coupled plasma (ICP) sources for spectroscopic analysis are based.

New Approaches to Teaching

Robinson (page 282 *) reports on an interesting paper from the Journal of Research in Science Teaching. Visual information aids consisting of pictures and diagrams that contain text were found to help students perform better in laboratory.

These findings might also apply to the two videotapes described in this issue. Goedhart et al. (page 378) have prepared a video that helps bridge the gap between the theory and the practice of distillation. Browne and a number of teaching assistants (page 383) have prepared videotapes to help students learn many of the techniques required in an organic laboratory course, and their work is being published by JCE Software.

Anthony et al. (page 322 *) describe another of the NSF-sponsored initiatives in chemical education, the joint ChemLinks and MC² project, which is creating topic-oriented modules that will encourage student-centered courses during the first two years of the curriculum. Martin (page 325 *) describes a different but related approach in which groups of students become investigative reporters and find out what makes research groups tick in their department.

Webster and Hooper (page 328 *) report preliminary evaluation of the use of supplemental instruction (SI) in introductory chemistry courses. SI involves voluntary participation by students in a one-hour weekly interactive session that supplements the traditional lecture/discussion/lab format.

Dallas ACS National Meeting

You are invited to attend the Division of Chemical Education program (page 263) at the upcoming ACS National Meeting in Dallas. Cohen and Cohen's guide (page 271) should help you to enjoy the city and its many science museums and centers.

* designates articles of special interest to high school teachers.