Subject: Mathematica in teaching quantum

From: Francl Michelle M <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 94 11:09:44 EST

I've been using Mathematica in my first year graduate course in quantum   
chemistry for the last three years.  It allows me to assign more complex
problems than I would otherwise, and the graphical interface provides 
very powerful feedback to the students. It's one to thing to tell them        
that the same electron distribution can be described by more than one         
function and quite another to let them calculate it and see it.  This     
last year I taught the course as a tutorial, essentially asking students  
to work through a set of problems/derivations in groups outside of class.   
Each group met with me once a week to discuss/present their results.  Rather
than write notebooks for them, I let them do it (though I ask for copies
for my files -- principally so that I can eventually use what they develop
for undergraduate courses -- writing these things takes time!)          
                                                                              
Michelle M. Francl                                                            
Associate Professor of Chemistry                                              
Bryn Mawr College                                                             
                                                                              
[email-masked]