Classes

I have been fortunate to work in a mixed department at the Illinois Institute of Technology. This has afforded me the opportunity to teach courses in both the Physics Division and the Chemistry Division.

PHYS 304: Kinetic Theory and Thermodynamics

I used the book An Introduction to Themal Physics by Daniel V. Schroeder for this class. This course was an upper division course. Both I and the students thought that the book was outstanding. The mix of problems is quite interesting and held the attention of the students throughout the semester. The detailed Ising Model code was also easy to teach.

PHYS 427: Advanced Physics Laboratory I

I used two books for this course: Experiments in Modern Physics by Melissinos and Napolitano and Building Scientific Apparatus by Moore, Davis, and Coplan. This course was an upper division course. Each week, I alternated between a straight scientific laboratory and a construction laboratory where the students were required to build a piece of experimental equipment to make a specific measurement. The scientific laboratories covered the compton effect, x-ray absorption, thin-film conductivity, alpha spectroscopy, and gamma spectroscopy. The construction laboratories involved building detectors and pulse counting electronics, building an air concentrator to measure airborne radioactivity, building a projectile motion device with video capture, building a geyser monitored by computer, and building a program for calculating band structure. The students were required to present some of the experiments as oral presentation and the rest as normal laboratory reports.

CHEM 321: Instrumental Methods of Analysis

I used the book Instrumental Methods of Analysis by Willard, Merritt, Dean, and Settle for this class. This course was an undergraduate laboratory course. One of the interesting things that worked well in this course was that each student had 4 weeks to perform a final project. Each student randomly selected a project out of a hat and then had 4 weeks to solve that problem. The students were required to present their results to a three faculty member panel. All of the presentations went well and most of the students enjoyed their work. I would chose to use the book Principles of Instrumental Analysis by Skoog, if I teach this course again.

CHEM 344: Physical Chemistry

This was a course focusing on Quantum Chemistry. I used the book Quantum Chemistry by McQuarrie for this class. This is an excellent undergraduate textbook. In my opinion, it would not be sufficient for use in a graduate course. I, for the first time, used software to assist in teaching this course. The people at LiveMath gave me an unbelievable price because I required software for each student, significantly less than the student price of $99.00 (U. S.). I believe that the use of this software helped some of the students to get past the mathematics and deeply into the concepts of quantum chemistry. LiveMath Maker is a symbolic computational program that runs on Mac, Linux, and Windose operating systems.

CHEM 509: Physical Methods of Characterization

This is always a difficulty course to teach. There is really not a book that covers every physical-analytical technique. I collaborated with my thesis advisor (Piero Pianetta at Stanford University) to come up with a set of lecture notes that would be appropriate for a chemistry course of this type.

CHEM 510: Electronics and Interfacing

This is also a difficult course to teach as most chemistry students do not have a strong background in electronics. I used two books for this course, Digital and Microprocessor Electronics for Scientific Applications and Analog Electronics for Scientific Applications both by Dennis Barnal. I required each student to build a final project using a specially designed kit from Phidgets Incorporated. The student projects were exceptional and I have created a website where they can be seen. I am quite proud of all of the students in this course. I encourage all to take a look at their work. Note that this was a one semester course.

CHEM 512: Spectroscopic Methods II

This course covers both spectroscopic instruments and atomic techniques. I used the book Spectrochemical Analysis by J. D. Ingle, Jr. and S. R. Crouch. This course does require an understanding of basic mathematics including calculus. The most difficult part of the course for the students was learning the optics and error analysis necessary to understand the techniques.

IPRO 317: Design and Construction of an 0.6 m Computer Controlled Newtonian Telescope

At IIT, all students are required to complete two interprofessional projects (IPRO). These courses are designed to teach students how to complete large projects in a group setting. This course brought 15 students from multiple departments together to design and build a 0.6 m telescope. The course website can be viewed here. This project placed first overall in the IPRO Competition. The students in this course were extremely dedicated and through a herculean effort designed and constructed the physical structure of the telescope. A telescope control system for Mac OS X was also completed from scratch. The students experienced many hard lessons during this project. I trust that you will find the story of their work as exciting as I did.

Myself and the IPRO 317 group with the telescope structure and the iMac used to control the motion of the telescope at the completion of the project in the Spring 2003 semester at IIT. The upper cage of the telescope is on the floor in the center of the picture. The assembled telescope would not fit in the room.