A Kimist with an IPHoNe

    I teach chemistry to undergraduate students and I am interested in finding ways to use iPhones in the teaching and learning process. My university is providing iPhones for all incoming freshmen in the fall 2008 semester, so several members of my department are also interested in finding ways to use iPhones in the process of teaching and learning chemistry.

To get my iPhone, I wrote a proposal about some ways I would like to use iPhones in my classes. Some things I envisioned are possible with current iPhones. Other activities may be possible in the future. In my Introductory Chemistry lab, students take a final examination, part of which deals with procedures in the laboratory. This can be a difficult topic to test in the traditional manner, with words and figures. iPhones would allow for a test question to refer to a video recorded procedure on YouTube. The question would ask if the procedure shown is correct, and if not, what is wrong with it or how would the error affect the student’s results. There could be several different versions, allowing for students to have different exam versions.

In my Consumer Chemistry course, we spend a great deal of time discussing chemical background of environmental issues. One in-class assignment could be for students to find, view, and critique recent media reports on environmental issues. Students might be asked to decide if the report contained enough explanation of the science involved in the issue. They might be asked about the accuracy of the description of the science. They might be asked to re-write the report adding more science description and more accurate science description. They might then be asked to video record their revised report for viewing by the whole class. The last part of this assignment is not currently possible with the iPhone because current iPhones do not record video.

The last part of my proposal uses features that are not currently available on the iPhone, at least commercially on an un-jail-broken phone. I envision students in my analytical chemistry class on a small boat motoring across a nearby lake. As they move, they use a nitrate-specific electrode to measure nitrate concentrations in the lake. Simultaneously, they are recording latitude/longitude data with GPS capability as they go. Combined, the coordinates and nitrate data allow students to assemble a concentration map. In my proposal, I envision that the students discover a nitrate plume entering the lake from a specific stream. They begin sampling the stream and trace the nitrates upstream to a park where runoff water from the university flows down the street and into the stream. Ultimately, students use their iPhones to determine that the nitrates are coming from the fertilizer used by the university.

The nitrate specific electrode is representative of a wide variety probes that produce an electric potential that varies in a linear (or at least known) way with some measured quantity, in this case concentration of nitrate in a solution. Other probes that we use routinely in Introductory and General Chemistry courses are temperature, pressure, pH, and voltage. Our department would like to use iPhones to collect data from probes like these. When this becomes possible, students’ personal iPhones can replace our 32 lab computers, saving the university around $30,000 every three years.

In order for probes to be used with iPhones, the potential-versus-value curve must be known, software for the iPhone to acquire, store, and present the data in a meaningful way must be written for iPhone, and an interface between iPhones and probes must be created. Another important factor is the power demands of the probes. A representative of a company that makes probes like we use for teaching labs told me that some of their probes consume tens of milliamps, which might create a problem if they must be powered by the iPhone. An alternative is to have some kind of interface that provides its own power for the probe, such as Vernier’s LabPro interface. This device uses a USB connection to computers, so a similar connection to iPhones seems reasonable. An alternative might be to use a Bluetooth or wi-fi communication scheme to connect the probe/interface to the iPhone. Some have reported devices that communicate data to iPhone via WiFi. A similar communication scheme for probeware is easily imagined. At the moment, we have not identified anyone who is willing and able to perform the necessary hardware and software development to make this idea possible.