Science Interactions Textbook

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TheInteractions curriculum introduces students to science as an endeavor, a process we engage in, rather than solely a set of discoveries by others. Through engaging in modeling and scientific explanation students explore curious aspects of the everyday world, discovering how the unseen world of atomic level interactions and energy transformations are responsible for much of what we observe around us.

Fundamental forces, unseen yet felt in every moment of our existence, govern the interactions of matter and energy that in turn shape our lives. By understanding these forces, we create a foundation that supports doing and understanding modern sciences and technologies. Why do clothes stick together when they come out of the dryer? How is it that a tiny spark can trigger an explosion? Working from these and other questions, students start their explorations by asking their own questions and discussing what they already know. They observe phenomena, engage in hands on activities and use online simulations to collect evidence. From their evidence, they construct mental models of the forces that drive interesting phenomena and test their models by predicting further events. Learn more

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DRL-1232388. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

This NGSS aligned curriculum is designed to support high school physical science students in developing an understanding of the forces and energy involved in atomic and molecular interactions. The year-long Interactions curriculum could be used in a physical science class, or tweaked to embed activities into a chemistry class. Interactions can be offered as a paper-pencil curriculum with the teacher facilitating web based simulation activities on a classroom computer, or it can be offered completely online for classrooms where students have personal (or shared) computers. In particular, students will:

The curriculum consists of four units that focus on answering a driving question designed to engage students in the learning goal and help them relate and build connections among ideas developed throughout the unit. Each unit is made up of a series of investigations, which are in turn consists of several activities. Driving questions and overviews for each unit are included below.

Students develop a model of electric interactions to explain electrostatic phenomena. To develop and revise their models, students collect evidence related to how charged objects interact with other objects. They develop a particulate model of materials and a model of atomic structure to start building an understanding of the mechanism of charging objects.

Students further develop their model of electrostatic interactions by incorporating the relationship between electric potential energy and electric forces. In particular, the unit focuses on the electrostatic attractions and energy conversions involved in the formation of molecules (chemical reactions).

Students use their models of molecular structure to explain and predict observed properties of materials. Then, students analyze and compare the energy transformations and conversions that occur during phase changes and chemical reactions. The model of electric interactions expands to incorporate permanent dipoles at the molecular level.

Students explore how molecular interactions in water based environments are important for life and result in shapes necessary for biological functions. Students will apply the notion of stability and energy to describe how a fever can disrupt biologically important molecules (proteins). They will use simulations to see how temperature changes can affect the binding structure of proteins.

One of the fruits of the Scientific Revolution was the idea of a social science that would operate in ways comparable to the newly triumphant natural sciences. Thus was set in motion a long and often convoluted chain of two-way interactions that still have implications for both scholarship and public policy. This book, by the dean of American historians of science, offers an excellent historical perspective on these interactions.

The core of the book consists of two long essays. The first focuses on the role of analogies as linking factors between the two realms. Examples are drawn from the physics of rational mechanics and energy physics (in relation to marginalist or neoclassical economics) and from the biology of the cell theory (in relation to nineteenth-century sociology). The second essay looks closely at the relations between the natural and the social sciences in the period of the Scientific Revolution.

The book also includes a record of a series of conversations between the author and Harvey Brooks (Professor of Technology and Public Policy Emeritus at Harvard) that addresses the present-day public policy implications of the historical interactions between the natural and the social sciences. A short but illuminating history of the terms "natural science" and "social science" concludes the book.

Matter & Interactions is a textbook by Ruth Chabay and Bruce Sherwood (John Wiley & Sons, 4th edition, 2015) that emphasizes a modern perspective on the calculus-based introductory physics curriculum taken by science and engineering students. It engages students in:

M&I is in use in large engineering and science courses at large and medium sized universities including Purdue University, Georgia Tech, Cal State Long Beach, North Carolina State University, the University of Mississippi, Carnegie Mellon, Minnesota State University Moorhead, Villanova, High Point University, and the University of West Florida. A number of universities including the University of Michigan use it in courses for honors students or physics majors.

The curriculum is also used outside the United States, including at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, Macquarie University, Australia, the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and the University of Helsinki.

Van der Waals interactions between molecules are among the most important forces in biology, physics, and chemistry, as they determine the properties and physical behavior of many materials. For a long time, it was considered that these interactions between molecules are always attractive. Now, for the first time, Mainak Sadhukhan and Alexandre Tkatchenko from the Physics and Materials Science Research Unit at the University of Luxembourg found that in many rather common situations in nature the van der Waals force between two molecules becomes repulsive. This might lead to a paradigm shift in molecular interactions.

"The textbooks so far assumed that the forces are solely attractive. For us, the interesting question is whether you can also make them repulsive," Prof Tkatchenko explains. "Until recently, there was no evidence in scientific literature that van der Waals forces could also be repelling." Now, the researchers have shown in their paper, published in the renowned scientific journal Physical Review Letters, that the forces are, in fact, repulsive when they take place under confinement.

The ubiquitous van der Waals force was first explained by the German-American physicist Fritz London in 1930. Using quantum mechanics, he proved the purely attractive nature of the van der Waals force for any two molecules interacting in free space. "However, in nature molecules in most cases interact in confined spaces, such as cells, membranes, nanotubes, etc. In is this particular situation, van der Waals forces become repulsive at large distances between molecules," says Prof Tkatchenko.

Mainak Sadhukhan, the co-author of the study, developed a novel quantum-mechanical method that enabled them to model van der Waals forces in confinement. "We could rationalize many previous experimental results that remained unexplained until now. Our new theory allows, for the first time, for an interpretation of many interesting phenomena observed for molecules under confinement," Mainak Sadhukhan says.

The discovery could have many potential implications for the delivery of pharmaceutical molecules in cells, water desalination and transport, and self-assembly of molecular layers in photovoltaic devices.

Prof Tkatchenko's research group is working on methods that model the properties of a wide range of intermolecular interactions. Only in 2016, they found that the true nature of these van der Wals forces differs from conventional wisdom in chemistry and biology, as they have to be treated as coupling between waves rather than as mutual attraction (or repulsion) between particles.

Human-computer interaction (HCI) is an area of research and practice that emerged in the early 1980s, initially as a specialty area in computer science embracing cognitive science and human factors engineering. HCI has expanded rapidly and steadily for three decades, attracting professionals from many other disciplines and incorporating diverse concepts and approaches. To a considerable extent, HCI now aggregates a collection of semi-autonomous fields of research and practice in human-centered informatics. However, the continuing synthesis of disparate conceptions and approaches to science and practice in HCI has produced a dramatic example of how different epistemologies and paradigms can be reconciled and integrated in a vibrant and productive intellectual project.

Until the late 1970s, the only humans who interacted with computers were information technology professionals and dedicated hobbyists. This changed disruptively with the emergence of personal computing in the later 1970s. Personal computing, including both personal software (productivity applications, such as text editors and spreadsheets, and interactive computer games) and personal computer platforms (operating systems, programming languages, and hardware), made everyone in the world a potential computer user, and vividly highlighted the deficiencies of computers with respect to usability for those who wanted to use computers as tools.

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