Volume 7,  Issue 3
1999

Mathematica in the Classroom

Classroom Chemistry Simulations

At Imperial College, staff from the mathematics and chemistry departments have set up computer-based "Mathematics Laboratories" for first year chemistry undergraduates. We’ve provided several types of activity in these laboratories, but one of the most important kinds involves students’ setting up and studying models and simulations of chemical conditions and processes. Dedicated simulation software exists for this sort of thing, much of it offering a lot of presentational sophistication and dynamic interactivity. But actually, all our simulations are implemented entirely in Mathematica; moreover, our presentation style is simple and stark in the extreme.

Phil Ramsden, a Mathematica user and educator since the days of Version 1.0, serves on the Program Committee of the International Mathematica Symposium. At Imperial College in London, England, he is the manager of the METRIC Project, which writes and runs Mathematica-based courses. In his spare time he does a little math.

Phil Ramsden
Department of Mathematics
Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine
London, UK
p.ramsden@ic.ac.uk
metric.ma.ic.ac.uk/~pjram