EMPLOYMENT OF SUITABLE DEVICES AND PREPARATION OF EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS FOR PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY EDUCATION AT HIGH SCHOOLS

The education of physical chemistry in Czech schools is rarely supported by corresponding experiments and hardly any of them reflects the real-life laboratory and industrial practice, where a large scale employment of devices and applications based on physical chemistry methods and phenomena is typical. For example, various types of methods based on the interaction of light and matter are widely used for analysis in science and industry (UV VIS, Infra-Red, Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy etc.) and in various commercial applications (optical devices). Plenty of analytical and commercial applications are based on electrochemical phenomena (pH measurements, ion selective electrodes, dry cells etc.). Therefore, it is necessary to introduce the physical chemistry phenomena and related experiments supported by appropriate devices and methods in the high school chemistry curriculum. However, for the majority of high schools in the Czech Republic, the price, space requirements and necessity of trained staff are limiting factors for employment of these devices and experiments in physical chemistry education. Solution of the problem is searching for such devices which are relatively cheap, modular, multifunctional and user-friendly with cheap and easy servicing and creating the experiments and educational materials which reflect the phenomena and applications mentioned above. To fulfill the task, spectrometer Ocean Optics USB 2000 and multifunctional device Pierron Infraline Graphic have been employed as suitable devices for preparation and testing of variable educational materials and experiments which are focused on introducing the spectroscopy and spectroscopic methods as well as other methods based on physical chemistry phenomena (pH, conductivity) into high school chemistry curriculum. There have been proposed, prepared and tested the educational materials suitable for high school, including PC presentations (MS PowerPoint, OOo Impress), educational texts and worksheets describing the experiments. These are, for example, qualitative and quantitative analysis of dyes in various foods and drinks, natural dyes in herbs, shortened analysis of water (Cl-, NO3-, pH measurements, and conductivity).