Computer controlled data acquisition and analysis systems have been integrated into the introductory laboratories for both science and non-science majors. These laboratories are associated with General Chemistry, Equilibrium and Analysis, Accelerated General Chemistry, Accelerated General Chemistry Laboratory, and Perspectives in Environmental Chemistry. These five courses service all chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and pre-health-science, and environmental studies students as well as students not majoring in the sciences. More than 250 students use this equipment annually. In these courses, Students perform experiments that require significant amounts of data to be collected, processed, analyzed, and interpreted . This project focuses on the interpretation and analysis of observations rather on data collection. Examples of the many experiments that use the new data collection systems are determination of the heats of reaction in solutions, of heat capacities of metals, and of the order of reactions from kinetic measurements. Also, the new equipment permits simultaneous measurements that allows two or three concepts to be integrated into a single experiment.
