We have designed an exercise suitable for a lab or project in an undergraduate physical chemistry course that creates a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to calculate the energy of the S[subscript 0] ground electronic state and the S[subscript 1] and T[subscript 1] excited states of H[subscript 2]. The spreadsheet calculations circumvent the…

This paper discusses the teaching of basic quantum mechanics in high school. Rather than following the usual formalism, our approach is based on Feynman's path integral method. Our presentation makes use of simulation software and avoids sophisticated mathematical formalism. (Contains 3 figures.)

The invention of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) 30 years ago opened up a visual window to the nano-world and sparked off a bunch of new methods for investigating and controlling matter and its transformations at the atomic and molecular level. However, an adequate theoretical understanding of the method is demanding; STM images can be…

The Association Supporting Computer Users in Education (ASCUE) is a group of people interested in small college computing issues. It is a blend of people from all over the country who use computers in their teaching, academic support, and administrative support functions. Begun in 1968 as the College and University Eleven-Thirty Users' Group…

In this paper, we describe animations and animated visualizations for introductory and intermediate-level quantum mechanics instruction developed at the University of St Andrews. The animations aim to help students build mental representations of quantum mechanics concepts. They focus on known areas of student difficulty and misconceptions by…

Various modern electronic structure methods are now days used to teach computational chemistry to undergraduate students. Such quantum calculations can now be easily used even for large size molecules.

We introduce a computer exercise that bridges spectroscopy and thermodynamics using statistical mechanics and the experimental data taken from the commonly used laboratory exercise involving the rotational-vibrational spectrum of HCl. Based on the results from the analysis of their HCl spectrum, students calculate bulk thermodynamic properties…

This paper discusses the role of high school chemistry teachers' beliefs in implementing computer visualization software to teach atomic and molecular structure from a quantum mechanical perspective. The informants in this study were four high school chemistry teachers with comparable academic and professional backgrounds. These teachers received…