The project will develop a unified physical chemistry lab for the study of thermodynamics and kinetics in which some traditional as well as novel experiments are all related to nonequilibrium chemical self-organization. The Belousov- Zhabotinskii oscillating reaction will be the major focus. Students will study the phenomenology and dynamic behavior through "hands on" experiments via electrochemical techniques, calorimetry and video analysis (for the quantitative study of spatial phenomena). The polymerization of methacrylic acid will be studied with video analysis of propagating reaction fronts and viscometry of the product polymer. All experiments will use computer data acquisition with comparison to numerical models.
