CLICK (Color and Light to Improve Chemical Knowledge), a recently funded NSF TUES grant, is a project designed to help increase undergraduate engagement in chemistry courses by blurring the boundaries between real world and laboratory experiences. By leveraging a student's existing personal technology as a scientific tool and complementing it with portable chemical sensor technology, CLICK intends to enable and encourage informal exploration of interactions between light and matter in students' everyday environments. The CLICK project includes three strategies: (1) the use of smartphone cameras and UV flashlights to explore fluorescent and phosphorescent properties of common household materials; (2) the use of portable multifunctional chemical analysis systems for students to design and test their own experiments; and (3) the performance of more refined and sophisticated laboratory-based experimentation with materials students bring in from outside the laboratory using more sophisticated laboratory instrumentation. One of the activities performed in the fall 2013 semester was to use the Vernier SpectroVis and fiber optic accessory to record the spectra of incandescent, fluorescent, and LED light bulbs in the physical chemistry laboratory. These spectra were then imported into Excel and fitted to the blackbody radiation curve to find the appropriate temperature. These temperatures could then be compared to one another as well as to the value on their packages. Students then took the Vernier devices outside the lab to examine a variety of light sources to determine which type of light bulb was being used. Other activities planned or in progress will be discussed, including experiments that can be performed at home using the Vernier systems in conjunction with smartphones and household products (e.g., kinetics of bleaching of blue jeans and an iodine clock reaction).

Portable chemical sensors, smartphones, and things that glow: CLICK progress report, Year 1

247th National Meeting (2014)

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