Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry

As a discipline, physical chemistry has earned a reputation among students for being difficult and challenging. Unfortunately, many students over the years have come to view physical chemistry as worse than simply being difficult; they have come to view it as boring, dull, and not very relevant. However, there is a growing interest in improving physical chemistry instruction with a focus on student engagement and learning. The authors in this book come from across
the country and represent schools of all sizes. From both classical and statistical thermodynamics to kinetics and quantum mechanics, from computational simulations to spectroscopy and chemical
education, the authors present ideas from a wide cross-section of physical chemistry. there is not a single, one-size-fits-all approach to engaging students in physical chemistry. This book reflects the diversity of physical chemistry experiences of the authors themselves. Some chapters provide suggestions to increase engagement by providing new, intriguing contexts such as protein interactions and surface chemistry through which to teach traditional physical chemistry concepts. Other chapters
focus on pedagogy, presenting ideas on how to increase the active involvement of students in their own learning or how to help students memorize difficult thermodynamic equations. Still other chapters
challenge traditional instructional notions with ideas such as using flipped classrooms and incorporating a graphic novel. In general, we organized the chapters according to these broad categories, although some chapters bridge categories. In short, this book is not so much a step-by-step instruction manual as it is a resource for ideas, guidance, and inspiration for improving your own physical chemistry curriculum for the purpose of engaging students.