Why develop new materials for physical chemistry? What are the potential benefits of using context-rich teaching strategies?
Physical chemistry is widely considered by both instructors, and certainly the instructed, to be the most daunting, demanding and difficult course in the chemistry curriculum. Between ten and fifteen thousand students a year take physical chemistry in the US and about ten thousand will graduate with a degree in chemistry. Both the number of enrolled chemistry graduate students and the number of chemistry doctorates awarded have declined in the last decade. In the same period, the number of doctorates awarded in physical chemistry has dropped more than twice as much as the overall chemistry Ph.D.s granted. This shrinking of the pool of physical chemists is troubling, given the ways in which applications of modern physical chemistry permeate many areas of chemistry, as well as other fields, such as medicine and biology – as the awarding of this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine not to a physician, but to a physical chemist, attests! There remains a paucity of references to the modern litera
