Subject: High School Chemistry

From: [email-masked] (Dr. David N. Haney)
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 1994 11:53:22 -0700 (PDT)

Chemistry Educators:

How interesting that we see a post from Robert Gotwals on what methods
we should provide to high school students and another post from a
high school student, Daniel Mulcrone.  It is my impression that while
we have some very fancy simulation tools that we could provide these
young students, there are details missing from some of these codes.
I expect that many of the needs of high school students are more like
the question of Daniel's dealing with what the elements are used for 
and how they fit into the periodic table.  

It seems to me that the items that one should focus on for high school 
chemistry should be simple building and display of molecules (including 
display of orbitals), and the periodic table.  I have seen various 
periodic table programs, but none that could provide an encyclopedia of 
information about each element.  It would be useful if one could
combine the multimedia approach that was being demonstrated by IBM
for several years along with the encyclopedia approach (ala ENCARTA)
focusing on chemistry.  While delivering the concept of molecular motion
by introducing dynamics could be very powerful, one would have to be 
careful about theoretical discussions of such topics that contain
so many approximations.
-- 

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