February 11, 2020
Published by admin at February 11, 2020
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Teaching physical chemistry–lecture recording?

At McGill like many universities, in large class rooms there is the possibility of lecture recording. I have done this for a number of years teaching my 150 or so Physical Chemistry life science students.  Of course there are pros and cons of recording, as noted in the blog by Zimmerman Although the […]
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February 11, 2020
Published by admin at February 11, 2020
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Physical Chemistry – Overview of Thermodynamics

The challenge of teaching thermodynamics to physical chemistry life science students is to have them understand the relationships between the macroscopic properties involving heat, work, energy and entropy.  After dispelling the myth that energy is stored in chemical bonds; after introducing the concept of temperature, and contrasting it to heat capacity; and […]
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August 30, 2013
Published by Bryan at August 30, 2013
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Physical Chemistry – Overview of Thermodynamics

In one example I use bond energies to calculate the energy per mole of sucrose and TNT (the explosive trinitrotoluene). Most students expect that TNT has more energy, but it turns out the two have about the same. So why is TNT an explosive (actually a conflagration)? TNT burns rapidly and involves a huge volume change. It is the rate of reaction (chemical kinetics) and the rapid volume change that causes the explosive damage. Then I can move to the thermodynamics overview.
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August 2, 2013
Published by Bryan at August 2, 2013
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Teaching physical chemistry–lecture recording?

Although the obvious "pro" of recording is to give students the chance to listen numerous times; review the material; and listen to missed lectures, there is a huge "con" and that is they skip class and opt to listen to my lectures at home. Last year the attendance dropped to half because lectures are available on line, but this year the time has been shifted to 8:30 a.m. from 10:30. I am going to predict that very few will want to attend at that hour.
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July 25, 2013
Published by Bryan at July 25, 2013
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Physical chemistry-Where is chemical energy stored?

One question I pose every year to my physical chemistry class of life science students in the first lecture is “Where is chemical energy stored?” Almost all of them say in chemical bonds. Ask how the energy is released, and they say “When bonds are broken.” Wrong!
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June 4, 2012
Published by Bryan at June 4, 2012
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Physical chemistry course outline on intrinsic spin angular momentum.

The lectures will be recorded at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras which is part of the NPTEL program. A major goal of NPTEL is to raise awareness and improve scientific and technological education throughout India by use of multimedia. I will be giving a series of lectures on basic spin theory for chemistry and physics undergraduate students who have a basis in quantum mechanics; know of spin and its importance; and want to go deeper.
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December 19, 2011
Published by Bryan at December 19, 2011
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Entropy (Part 6): Randomness and ensembles

httpvh://youtu.be/wFe2zu2116I After rolling 2, 3, 4, 10 and Avogadro’s dice, as seen in the entries below, it becomes clear that the most random states (most number of ways of rolling a number) always dominate while those with fewer arrangements occur less frequently: 1 Entropy: Randomness by rolling two dice 2 […]
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December 12, 2011
Published by Bryan at December 12, 2011
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Entropy (Part 5): Randomness by rolling Avogadro’s dice

With Avogadro's number of dice, you can roll them as much as you want, and the chance that there is an outcome other than the one that corresponds to the position of the spike is so unlikely you can safely ignore them.
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December 5, 2011
Published by Bryan at December 5, 2011
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Entropy (Part 4): Randomness by rolling ten dice

For 10 dice there are over 60 million arrangements and Figure 1 shows the outcomes for 30,000 rolls.
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November 21, 2011
Published by Bryan at November 21, 2011
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Entropy (part 3): Randomness by rolling four dice

The basic idea is that a physical system has many different arrangements (states) of particles which are consistent with some macroscopic quantity, like the temperature. Boltzmann found that out of all possible ways those particles can be arranged, only those that are consistent with the actual temperature need be considered. The chance of any other arrangements is negligible in comparison. Rolling dice illustrates this nicely.
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November 14, 2011
Published by Bryan at November 14, 2011
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Entropy (Part 2): Randomness by rolling three dice

it is suggested the difficulty students have in understanding that entropy is a measure of randomness can be approached by rolling dice. In the first entry two dice were rolled but in that case there are only 36 arrangements and 10 outcomes (rolls from 2 to 12). This does not show that the most random state dominates (i.e. the one with most number of arrangements consistent with a roll of 7) . To show that more dice need be rolled. In this entry three dice are shown to have more randomness in the outcomes (3 to 18).
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November 8, 2011
Published by Bryan at November 8, 2011
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Entropy (Part 1): Randomness by rolling two dice

To understand entropy, I roll dice. I start with two, then move to three, four, ten and then Avogadro’s constant of dice, and roll them randomly.
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