Based on the economic importance of coatings science to northeast Ohio and the potential for employment opportunities for students and graduates, Walsh University has developed an integrated laboratory experience to introduce juniors and seniors to paint and coatings issues. Surprisingly, few laboratory experiences have been developed to introduce students to paint chemistry. Education articles have been published about paint chemistry aimed at informing educators; but no significant laboratory experiences have been reported in chemical education literature. Few experiments are designed for the analysis of paints and a few exist for making individual components of paints (mainly pigments). The laboratory experience developed at Walsh is a more comprehensive research-like experience. It is a multi-week immersion giving students an exposure to many issues associated with designing, producing, and analyzing paints. The laboratory is more industrial-based than most teaching experiments; so it prepares students for non-academic environments in ways that traditional teaching experiments do not.<br/><br/>The experience is research-like because students are to repeat a procedure from a recently published paper and improve a property of the paint. Students synthesize an alkyd resin in a two-step process involving the alcoholysis of linseed oil with trimethylolpropane followed by the esterification of the products with phthalic anhydride. Students learn to follow the completion of the reaction by titration, FTIR, and NMR. The alkyd resin is then used to prepare mixtures of paints that are evaluated for viscosity, drying times, and hardness. After the students successfully make a paint, they design an experiment to improve a quality of the paint.<br/><br/>The presentation will emphasize the pedagogical significance of the laboratory experience. As a teaching tool, the research-like aspect that requires students to read and comprehend a primary publication. The students repeat procedure provides a foundation for which to build an inquiry-based experience that includes experimental design. The close alignment to regional industries serves as a motivational component and valuable practical experience. To address student unfamiliarity with the open-structure to the experience, each laboratory session ends with a 3-2-1 activity to help the students focus on their learning and develop a plan for the next laboratory session.

Developing an open-structure paint chemistry experience to prepare students for regional employment opportunities

2019 Spring National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.