How to Incorporate Technology with Inquiry-Based Learning to Enhance the Understanding of Chemical Composition; How to Analyze Unknown Samples

Suzanne Lunsford, William Slattery, Stamatina Tolias

The use of technology in teaching offers numerous amounts of possibilities and can be challenging for physics, chemistry and geology content courses. When incorporating technology into a science content lab it is better to be driven by pedagogy than by technology in an inquiry-based lab setting. Students need to be introduced to real-world technology in the beginning of first year chemistry or physics course to ensure real-world technology concepts while assisting with content such as periodic trends on the periodic table. This article will describe the use of technology with Raman Spectroscopy and Energy Dispersive XRay Spectroscopy (EDS) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) to research chemical compositions in the real world of unknown samples. Such unknown samples utilized in this lab were clamshell (parts of clams that look like shark teeth) versus shark teeth. The data will be shared to show how the students (pre-service teachers and in-service teachers) solved the problem using technology while learning important content that will assist in the next level of chemistry, physics and even geology.

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