The chemistry department is creating a computer-interfaced chemistry laboratory. The objective for the project is to strengthen chemical principles recognition by (1) simplifying data collection and (2) simplifying methods for representing relationships from the data. The revisions provide an avenue for open-ended experiments and experimental design which, in turn, foster critical thinking skills. The college is purchasing 12 MacIntosh laptop computers linked to the campus' instructional computing network for greater software availability, a TI Graph link for each computer to allow the students to transfer data for calculations at home, Labworks computer interface package to allow data acquisition, and a printer for hard copies of data, graphs, and reports. The lap-top computers allow other science labs, such as physics and physical science, to have access the equipment. The project also takes the equipment into area high schools to demonstrate a computer-interfaced lab.
