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NOTES TO INSTRUCTORS
GENERAL
Daryle Busch, president of the
American Chemical Society said "Green chemistry represents the pillars
that hold up our sustainable future. It is imperative to teach the
value of green chemistry to tomorrow's chemists.”
Because green chemistry is rapidly becoming the wave of the future, we believe that it is very important that students are exposed to green chemistry in many courses across their chemistry curriculum. These green chemistry modules were developed by a team of faculty members from the University of Scranton for the purpose of inserting green chemistry into specific courses encompassing the chemistry curriculum. It is our hope that other instructors will use these modules as models for infusing green chemistry into their courses. We encourage instructors to use, modify and copy them according to their needs for educational purposes, however any commercial use is prohibited unless permission of the authors is granted. We ask that you let us know when and how you use them (cannm1@uofs.edu). This will aid us in the assessment of the outcomes of this project.
In order to use the modules we suggest that you first have your students read the Introduction to Green Chemistry and then the specific module for your course. You may then want to discuss this material in class. To aid you in presenting the material in class, each module is equipped with a set of PowerPoint slides. You may want to have students make hard copies of the PowerPoint slides to aid in note taking.
Although each module was developed for a particular course we encourage instructors to peruse all the modules and find ways to infuse additional green chemistry into all the courses you teach. Other efforts to bring green chemistry into the classroom can be found at http://academic.scranton.edu/faculty/CANNM1/greenchemistry.html
ATOM ECONOMY MODULE
This module has been written primarily
for use in the two semester organic chemistry sequence (both lecture and
laboratory) traditionally encountered by students in the sophomore year.
The module uses examples of organic reactions and syntheses to illustrate
the concept of atom economy. However, atom economy is a simple concept
that can be applied to any situation where a reaction and/or synthesis
is encountered. Thus this module can be adapted for use in courses
such as general chemistry, inorganic chemistry, biochemistry, polymer chemistry,
environmental chemistry and industrial chemistry as well courses for non
science majors.
In an organic chemistry lecture course
this module can be inserted into a discussion when one first encounters
a reaction. Many organic books (designed for lecture) are written
so that the first reaction encountered in detail is a nucleophilic substitution
reaction. We have thus used an example of nucleophilic substitution
to begin the discussion of atom economy. The discussion is continued
by employing examples of elimination, addition and rearrangement reactions,
followed by several syntheses to further demonstrate the concept of atom
economy. The instructor will probably want to discuss these additional
illustrations of atom economy when one covers these types of reactions
and when one encounters various examples of syntheses. Alternatively
one may want to cover all the illustrations of atom economy at one time
when one gives an overview of the basis types of organic reaction.
The lecture instructor may want to focus simply on atom economy, leaving
discussions of experimental atom economy and discussions involving percentage
yield to the laboratory part of the course.
In an organic chemistry laboratory
course this module can be used when the students encounter their first
reaction. Not only does the module introduce the concept of atom
economy but it also provides instruction in the concept of percentage yield,
and measuring the efficiency of a reaction by a combination of the atom
economy and the percentage yield.