The topic of solutions chemistry has been heavily studied within the chemistry education literature. These studies have generated a list of common misconceptions related to what students think happens when solutes are dissolved in a solvent as well as what students think happens during a precipitation reaction. The literature lacks an answer to the question of (1) why do students think these processes happen and (2) what they believe the driving forces to be. The literature also shows that students do not have a basic understanding of both enthalpy and entropy, even after completing physical chemistry. Both of these concepts are very abstract, especially when related to complex thermodynamic situations typical of a physical chemistry course. There is also little literature describing how students view these concepts after completing general chemistry. The purpose of this study is to identify general chemistry students’ misconceptions about the dissolution and precipitation processes, as well as their use of enthalpy and entropy to explain these processes. We conducted semi-structured interviews in the style of predict-observe-explain in which students carried out hands on dissolving processes and precipitation reactions. Two manuscripts were published in the Journal of Chemical Education: one regarding student explanations of the temperature changes in these tasks and one regarding student reasoning about entropy changes and spontaneity. We developed a concept inventory called the Enthalpy and Entropy in Dissolution and Precipitation Inventory (E2DPI) and collected data from students in both general chemistry and physical chemistry courses. A manuscript reporting the development of the E2DPI was published in the Journal of Chemical Education.

In collaboration with the Tierney group, this experiment for undergraduate chemistry majors in an advanced synthesis course was designed to investigate connections between electron structure and spectroscopic data. The trispyrazolylborate (Tp) ligand and its derivatives are used in inorganic and bioinorganic experiments to mimic enzyme binding pockets, as well as function as a catalyst with applications in materials science.  Because Tp can form stable, six-coordinate complexes, M[Tp]2, with first row transitions metals, this ligand can be used to introduce students to advanced spectroscopy techniques and their connections to electronic structure.  After synthesis of two complexes using two unknown, first-row transition metals, students use multiple spectroscopic techniques (IR, paramagnetic NMR, variable temperature NMR, and EPR) to identify both of their unknowns. Students were assessed on the basis of a 10-15 minute presentation demonstrating interpretation of their data to identify their unknown metals. A manuscript was published in the Journal of Chemical Education.