The Bohr Radius Activity as a Touchpoint between Chemistry and Mathematics: An Interdisciplinary Collaboration

This paper describes an interdisciplinary collaboration of faculty and students from chemistry and mathematics to develop and implement an activity showcasing the relevance of calculus in chemistry to first-semester calculus students. The activity focuses on using calculus optimization methods to ma...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of chemical education 2024-05, Vol.101 (5), p.2134-2140
Main Authors: Findley, Bret R., Ashline, George L., O’Donovan, Barbara M., Andrea, Mitchell J., Wawruck, Dylan R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Calculus
Chemistry
Collaboration
Cooperation
Distribution functions
Hydrogen atoms
Mathematics
Physical chemistry
Probability distribution
Probability distribution functions
Science education
Students
Teaching methods
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Summary:This paper describes an interdisciplinary collaboration of faculty and students from chemistry and mathematics to develop and implement an activity showcasing the relevance of calculus in chemistry to first-semester calculus students. The activity focuses on using calculus optimization methods to maximize the ground-state radial probability distribution function for the hydrogen atom and verify that the Bohr radius gives the desired maximum. Broader goals include encouraging further mathematics study by chemistry students, enhancing awareness of calculus applications to the sciences, preparing students for physical chemistry, and cultivating scientists and mathematicians with broader and deeper backgrounds.
ISSN:0021-9584
1938-1328
DOI:10.1021/acs.jchemed.3c01098