Global climate change is one of the most important environmental challenges facing our citizens today. Since many important underlying concepts of climate science rely on models built on a fundamental understanding of chemistry, there is a great opportunity to introduce this real-world context in chemistry courses for science majors. We demonstrate that connections to climate science and global climate change can be incorporated easily into undergraduate chemistry curricula and can improve learning of both chemistry and climate science concepts. The NSF-funded Visualizing the Chemistry of Climate Change (VC3Chem) project developed, piloted and will be releasing publicly a set of interactive web-based resources that enable students to learn about isotopes and their relevance in determining historical temperature records; IR absorption by greenhouse gases; acid/base chemistry and the impacts of increasing atmospheric CO2 levels on the pH of and carbon speciation in oceans; and how thermochemistry and the combustion of fuels influence the earth's radiation balance. Changes in students' understanding about both climate change and core chemistry concepts have been measured to assess the efficacy of the tools and the approach.

Visualizing the chemistry of climate change (VC3Chem): Online modules for teaching chemistry through the real-world context of climate science

248th National Meeting (2014)

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