Hannes Jónsson

With user-friendly software, computers can enable students to explore and develop a deeper understanding of concepts. Modern workstations with graphical interfacing can combine the computational power for state-of-the-art calculations with hassle free program execution and analysis of results. A chemistry student graduating without hands-on experience with a research level computer has not received an up-to-date education. Furthermore, well chosen computer calculations can complement the traditional curriculum and enhance the student's intuition and understanding. Too often, regular student assignments are limited to calculations which can be done in a reasonable amount of time on a piece of paper, possibly with the help of a calculator, rather than calculations and graphics that best illustrate the concepts the student is expected to develop.

In the first phase of this project, a new upper division undergraduate chemistry course entitled `Computation in Chemistry' has been established at the University of Washington. The format is that of a laboratory course, but the students work exclusively with color graphics workstations and carry out various computational exercises. The first half of the course is at the level of algorithms, where the students enter and/or modify short programs on the computer written within a mathematical analysis program as a high level programming language (`Mathematica'). Later in the course, the students run larger, menu driven programs, both commercial chemistry software and software developed by undergraduates in the Department. In a second phase of this project, the software and exercises developed for the computer lab course will be incorporated into the regular undergraduate courses as homework assignments, independent projects and demonstrations. The software and the handouts developed in this project will be made available through the UCES www server.