Chemistry HyperLinks to the InterNet
Chemistry Software for Use with Beginning & College Chemistry:
CHEMiCALC allows students write and balance chemical equations. It then allows students to make stoichiometric calculations of % composition, empirical formulas, mole/mole, mass/mass, limiting reagent, and many more problem types. It has a great interactive periodic chart. This year the Personal Tutor was added so that students may be checked stepwise in attempting their homework problems. All this for a great price.
Dr. Bert Ramsay is a one man corporation who produced this great software package and sells it at a very low price for the beginning chemistry student. The educational price is $69 for a single purchase for faculty or students. Lab pack prices: $435 for 30, $360 for 20, $225 for 10, and $150 for 5. Dr. Ramsay is very flexible with mixing lab station licence and student purchase under the lab pack price. At HCC CHM 1025 students are able to purchase a licensed copy for their home computer for $15 to $20 depending on the enrollment.
I recommend that beginning and first semester general college chemistry students utilize this package.
Visit: chemicalc.com or email: Dr. Bert Ramsay or call: 1-800-243-6023
Your textbook publishers: Prentice Hall, Inc; has developed one of the best interactive sites on the Web to help you review each chapter. Click the URL below to access this site:
http://www.prenhall.com/corwin
This website is divided into chapters that match those in the second edition of book you have purchased for the course. The new edition has a new Chapter 1, so that Chapter 3 in your book is listed as Chapter 4 on this web site, etc. For each chapter in the website there is a list of Chapter Objectives (by section) and four multiple-choice quizzes. The three Explorer Quizzes give you practice answering drill problems, while the Master Quizzes give you more challenging problems that you can tackle when you feel you have the hang of the material. Note that each time you take a quiz, your answer choices are shuffled. Your instructor has assigned this website as part of your course homework. Answer at least one Explorer quiz and the Master Quiz and check your answers then submit each chapter's homework to the instructor via email addressed to:
jtaylorchm1025@yahoo.com
and a cc to: jtaylor@masterlinx.net
If you find a question difficult, use the Hint button for a clue or cross-reference to your textbook. Similarly, if you get a question wrong, you will get specific page references in your book as part of your feedback. Use these references to brush up on the areas where you could use some more practice.
PrenHall Chem Central Menu:http://www.prenhall.com/~chem/
The textbook publishers: Prentice Hall, Inc; has developed several of the best interactive sites on the Web to help you review each chapter. Each student may submit each chapter's quiz as homework to the instructor via email addressed to: jtaylorchm1046@yahoo.com and a cc to: jtaylor@hcc.cc.fl.us Click the URL below to access PrenHall's Hill Text site:
http://www.prenhall.com/hill
PrenHall McMurray and Fay text also has interactive test and tutorials on-line at:
http://cw.prenhall.com/~bookbind/pubbooks/mcmurry/
At the other end of the spectrum is the chemistry software produced by the Logal Corporation.
HCC and/or John Taylor has one CD of each of the six chemistry packages:
Chemistry Series
- The Atom
- Gas Laws
- Chemistry Tools (Periodic Chart and Stoichiometry Tool)
- Kinetics
- Equilibrium
- Electrochemistry
John Taylor is available to demonstrate any of the above packages or any of the below physics or biology titles:
Physics Series
- AC/DC Circuits
- Diffraction & Interference
- Electrodynamics
- Geometric Optics
- Mechanics
- Ripple Tank
- Waves
Biology Series
- Cardiovascular System
- Genetics
- Molecular Biology
- Photosynthesis
- Population Biology
- Respiratory System
As with the TI and Casio calculators, Logal has also integrated probes with the above software in its Microcomputer Based Lab (MBL). At HCC's Brandon Campus we only demonstrate the Interactive Simulations. Logal software has incorporated a good mathematical engine allowing the user to change the conditions, the chemicals, the reactions, and the graphical plots reflect the change real time. However, each title is a little expensive ($99 per title + $20 for the activities manual). There are various lab pack prices bring down the cost per station for a single user purchase of the entire series.
There is also a Tangible Math series including a Function Generator and Matric Interpreter recently released for windows.
Visit: logal.com of Call: 1-800-564-2587.
Portions of each of the titles above, are now packaged with CDs available when textbooks are adopted from Prentice Hall. The Interactive Chemistry Journey (about $25) was used last year at the Brandon Campus. The students must linearly go through the predefined tutorials. The management system and bookmarks didn't work so students could not verify their work or return to interupted work. The software requirement was abondon by Spring term.(Sometimes, you get what you pay for, but hopefully Pren Hall has corrected the problems.)
Visit: prenhall.com or call: 1-800-
West Publishing has a neat point and click chemistry CD, which cost between $25-30 ($28.75 plus shipping), and you do not have to adopt their text. (If you do it adds only $10 to the text). Discover Chemistry is a total point and click environment created with MacroMedia's Director. It has great graphics and great sound effects for today's generation. All the interactive tutorials are drag and drop, with wrong answers snapping back like a bad play in solitare. (After a while it gets boring through the 10 units and 150 exercises).
I really like the oxidation-reduction half equation balancing the best under electrochemistry unit, but there are only 12 problems with only two basic media. All graph plotting is static pictures, not allowing any user input to conditions.
I recommend my students order the package if they have the $30 to spend on the software. (When I saw the demo, I called the publisher and purchased the disc immediately).
Call West Publishing 1-800-328-9424. (I have no URL to visit.)
Probably one of the best overlooked chemistry software projects was developped by Richard Paselk, Mervin Hanson, and John Russell of Humboldt State and Richard Harper of Redwoord Software. Chemical Bonding Series does a great job of the visualization of the bonding concepts. However, when I met Dr. Paselk demonstrating his software at the International Conference on teaching and Learning, he said a Windows version would be available in 1996-7, but its vaporware. I immediately spent the $159 for the MAC version from Intellimation (1-800-346-8355) and use it whenever I am at a MAC lab at the University of South Florida.
However you may write Dr. Paselk at rapl@axe.humboldt.edu or call hime at 707-826-5719 to learn what's happen to his project.
Click on the Sites Below to HyperLink to ChemSites on the Web:
HCC has adopted the Houghton Mifflin text: Chemistry by Steven Zumdahl for 1998-2000. This allows our students to have a free subscription to the Chemistry Place.
You can sample this site as a guest: chemplace.com
ChemMystery: The Virtual Textbook: //www.library.advanced.org/3659
ChemLand: JavaApplets Denonstrating Chemical Acitivity http://owl.chem.umass.edu/Chemland/chemland.html
JavaScript Chemical Functions Calculators:
On-Line JavaScript Chemical Equation Balancer
On-Line JavaScript Interactive Periodic Table
JavaScript On-Line Molar Conversion Calculator