PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

Using Computers in Chemical Education

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger Than LifeBy Ken Costello — Chemistry Department — Phoenix College

As chemistry instructors we know the challengewith teaching chemistry is the realm of chemistry isso vast that most of it is either too large to see, toosmall to see, too fast to see, or simply not in theclassroom to be seen.

Let us start with the most common "seeing"problem, the microscopic world of atoms. If studentscould see at the atomic level, many of the obstaclesin learning chemistry would just vanish. Forexample, you could just hold up a piece of chalk andask, "What is the composition?"

Withmicroscopicvision, studentswould see thecalcium, carbon,and threeoxygen atomsand just tell you.

There would be no need to memorize. For example,we do not memorize how many legs a horse has. Wehave seen horses and therefore know how many legsthey have. That is the key in using PowerPoint.Show it and they will know it.

When you show "it," that does notmean words. Words are poor visualsfor helping students "see." Forexample, what happens if the screensays, "And now for a Combustion

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

Reaction..." then shows some text.Disappointed? You may haveexpected a video of the crowdpleasing whistling pop of hydrogenburning in a test tube or at least ananimation. What usually gets shownwith PowerPoint are not reactionsbut static representations ofreactions; in other words, text. Evenpaper could do that. It is a hugeunderutilization of computertechnology to put static text on thescreen.

Today's computers can display 16million colors at frame rates fourtimes faster than movie film. Also,the resolution (detail) of computersbeats DVDs fourfold.

On top of that, the audio capabilitiesof many computers include five-channel surround sound, the same asa movie theater.

Today's computers (even thecheapest ones) can deliver virtualreality at low cost.

Teachers have at their fingertips thetools to engage students and showconcepts with a level of clarity neverbefore possible.

Why do so many settle for bulleted

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

text?

PowerPoint is the first step to gettingthe most out of your computer-assisted presentations and to showchemistry bigger than life.

The problem of underutilizingcomputers in teaching could haveoriginated in teaching viachalkboards . Since it was notpossible to use millions of colors,pictures, or animations, lecturematerials were primarily text-based.When computers came to theclassroom, these lecture materialswere simply ported to the computer.

PowerPoint, like computers, also fellvictim to huge underutilization.

LET'S BAN LECTURE NOTES

Despite what you have seen,PowerPoint was not invented to takelecture notes and project them onto ascreen.

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

Three Ways to Perceive PowerPointPERCEIVE POWERPOINT ASMEDICINE

When I teach PowerPointworkshops, I do not begin byteaching what menus or buttons toclick; I start by explaining howPowerPoint should be perceived.There are three useful ways toperceive PowerPoint. The first wayis to treat it as medicine.

Look at PowerPoint as a drugstore,allowing you to select and dispensethe medication your students need...

...and you need to be quick before

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

you lose them completely.

Yes, there are various conditionsstudents have that need "medical"attention.

Below are three areas that requireremedies.

PROBLEMS IN LEARNING: Attention could be focused on the psychological andphysiological symptoms stemming from misunderstood words, lack of mental images, andfast pace learning. The symptoms include: irritability, headaches, weighed-down feeling,feeling of incompetence, and confusion, to name a few.

INAPPROPRIATE EMOTIONS: You may need to alleviate apathy, fear, boredom, oranger.

INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIORS: The way students do things (e.g., lab techniques) orthe way they act (e.g. tardiness) may need modified .

Instead of tackling the ailment, manyteachers usually use PowerPoint tosimply display information.

This is just like having a patient readtheir prescription bottle label andexpecting them to be cured.

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

Yes, the label is informative, but ithas no medicinal value.

In other words, information isinformative, but, alone, it may haveno medicinal power to cure what ailsyour audience.

What does this mean as far as designing a PowerPoint presentation?It means that you do not just thinkabout what information needs to beshown, but what effect you want tohave upon the students. For example,when I give a presentation about theminerals that early humans learnedwere useful in making stone tools, Iactually want students to feel fear.

So before I dive into an informativediscussion of silicon dioxide andmicrocrystalline minerals such aschert, flint, agate, and obsidian, Iconsider the medicinal power of thepresentation.

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

In other words, I know I want to curethe apathy that may be towards a listof minerals used by humansthousands of years ago. My series of"medicinal compounds" are firstdispensed to create a sense of fear,followed by a sense of relief andthen appreciation as this earlychemical knowledge kept humansfrom going extinct. The next effectplanned is surprise. I show them howthis ancient stone tool technology isstill the preferred material for someitems for chemistry labware andsurgical instruments.

So I begin with a series of images tocreate fear, the same fear that ourancestors experienced whenconfronting predators.

To download this PowerPoint clickhere. (Note: This is the PowerPoint Iuse, but it has no narration. It is alsoabout 7 megs.)

To see a web version of thispresentation, go to this Web tutorial.

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

It includes a written narration.

In all presentations, look at themedicinal power that PowerPoint hasto either induce effects you want orto cure ailments the students have.Place information within thiscontext. Otherwise, (provided thatthey don't go to sleep) students maymemorize information but not see itsrelevancy or have an emotionalconnection to the information. Therelevancy and emotional connectioncreated with imagery will help keepthis knowledge in long termmemory.

PowerPoint Perception Two: A Magician's Hat of TricksI mentioned that there are three waysto perceive PowerPoint. The secondway is to realize it has the power of amagician's hat of tricks, and you arethe magician. Being a chemistryteacher, the word "sorcerer" may bemore fitting.

Either way, below represents thetype of magic you have at yourdisposal when using PowerPoint.

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

Sound Animation

In the image below, I created a composite of images to make a colorful skyline of a cityattuned to chemistry. The image has 16 million colors, 14 million more than your eyescan even see. It's my logo image for my Chemistry & Society online course.

I created this image for my history ofthe Periodic Table PowerPointpresentation. Again, the use of colorshelp spot the various chemicalgroups and lets me transition fromthe early four "element" table.

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

For a tutorial on global warming, Imade an image by putting a wool capon the Earth and giving the Earth astressed out face. This kind ofimagery gets and holds attentionwhile information is delivered. Theimage connects to students at bothlogical and emotional levels.

You don't have to create your ownimages. There are millions of imageson the Web that are in public domainor that you can use under fair usepolicies.

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

Here is a carbon nanotube. Note thatimages I show in this article areabout four times smaller than I showin a PowerPoint presentation.

My favorite search engine is Google.Besides the useful default Websearch, use the Images searchcategory.

For example, if you type"molecule" in the search field, Google will begin to showthumbnails of all images it knows that uses that word. Below you see it found 69,100images. Here I'm showing just the first nine. When you click on the thumbnail image, youare taken to the Website that has the image. (I like to search for "large" images by clickingon "Large" indicated by my yellow arrow.)

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

You are now at the site with theimage. Click on that thumbnail again(which is now at the top of thescreen) and you will see the full sizeimage.

When the full-size image appears,click on it with the right mousebutton and choose "Save ImageAs..." and then save it in a folderwhere you can find it.

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

In PowerPoint, insert the image byclicking on the Insert menu and thenthe Picture submenu. Choosing the"From File" selection will let youbrowse to the file you saved.

Once the picture is inserted, you canresize it by dragging one of thecorners (blue arrow). Cropping thepicture is possible by using thecropping tool (yellow arrow) whichis on the Picture toolbar. Click on theimage to make the Picture Toolbarappear. If it doesn't, go to the Viewmenu and go to submenu, Toolbars,then checkmark Picture.

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

Regarding imagery, PowerPoint alsoallows images to be placed in WordArt text for extra impact.

It also supports GIF anims like thefire GIF anim here.

PowerPoint supports a variety of animation techniques. As mentioned, it supports GIFanims. I made the below animation as a GIF anim that can be played in PowerPoint or onthe Web. Roll the mouse over the helix. Notice how animation helps your brain processthe image.

To find GIF anims or clip art, you

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

can click on the Clip Art button atthe bottom of the PowerPointwindow (left yellow arrow). Whenthat is clicked, the Clip Art task panewindow appears. You can type in thetopic to search (top yellow arrow).Also, click on Clip art on OfficeOnline (bottom yellow arrow). It willsearch for all media types (clip art,photos, movies, i.e., GIF animations,and sounds.) or you can click on justthe type you want.

Click on a thumbnail listed and dragit onto the PowerPoint main screen.Note the GIF animations will notanimate until you go intopresentation mode.

As I said, PowerPoint supports a variety of animation techniques to add to yourmagician's hat of tricks. Two others involves motion paths and emphasis effects.PowerPoint has some great animation tools for creating animations quickly.

The animation on the left wascreated using PowerPoint. To see theanimation, roll mouse over theimage.

To see a more sophisticated one Icreated in PowerPoint, click here.(The PowerPoint screen was scaleddown 50% and converted to aQuicktime movie). Click back onbrowser to return to this page.

At the end of this article, I have alink to a page with many PowerPointpresentations you can download andrun.

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

PowerPoint is good for chemistryanimations. For example, it haseffects called Emphasis effectswhich includes the Spin effect. Thetwo inner electrons of lithium weregrouped (see upper yellow arrow).Then by applying the Spin effect, theelectrons in orbit are made to spin.Other settings let you set how manytimes it will spin and how fast.

For the outer single electron, I usedthe Circle Motion Path effect. If youdon't see the Circle effect listed,click on "More Motion Paths..." (bottom yellow arrow). Again, thereare other settings to set the speed andrepetitions of the circling.

Motion paths allow for all kinds ofchemical reactions to be animated.

For example, I wanted to show aradical chain reaction for ethylene.To the left is a static image of thebasic process. By using motion pathsand the spin effect, I created ananimated version, which is muchmore clear. Roll mouse over imageto see animation.

The other two effects, Entrance andExit round out PowerPoint's arsenalof effects. These allow objects toappear and disappear, fly in or out,and many other useful effects.

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

The last two versions of PowerPoint(2002 & 2003) are totally differentfrom the early versions regardinganimation. These new versions are aquantum leap above the earlyversions and comparable to programslike Flash.

I have worked with computeranimation programs for 25 years andhave never seen any animationprogram as easy to use asPowerPoint. PowerPoint's powerfulcapabilities are very muchunrecognized, even by those whowork with animation daily.

Earlier I mentioned that inPowerPoint's hat of magic tricks,sound was also available. I don'tusually use PowerPoint's built insounds; they are sometimesannoying. But for specific purposes,sound is great. For example, as mypresentation moved towards adiscussion of the Big Bang, I talkedabout how the speed of galaxieswere measured using Doppler shifts.I played Doppler shift sounds that atrain and airplane make. I alsoincluded the sound of an ultrasonicDoppler flow detector (for the

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

benefit of future medical students).

To insert a sound, go to the Insertmenu, then down to "Movies andSounds." Go across and choose"Sound from File...". This lets youbrowse to the sound file that youmay have saved from the Internet orrecorded yourself.

Notice, this is the same way to inserta "Movie from File...".

To find sounds on the Internet, I alsouse Google. It does not have a soundcategory like it does images, but youcan use the normal search for Webpages to find sound files.

For example, let's search for trainsounds. In the Google search fieldtype in "trains sound wav mp3 aiff."The last three words are commonsound formats. So this will help itfind sites with digitized sounds.Beware of some of these sites. Theymay have a lot of ad-ware that caninfect your computer. I use the free"Ad-Ware SE Plus" program thatcan erase these from my computer.

A safer place to get sounds is fromMicrosoft via PowerPoint's clip artmenu. Remember, before we used itto find GIF animations. It also has

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

sound files. Again, if you click theclip art icon and then Clip art onOffice Online icon link (same asshown above), you can search forsounds. Just uncheck the other mediatypes, if you want just sounds.

Here I did a search with only theMovies and Sounds media typeschecked. Animations are indicatedby the moving star icon. Soundsshow their name with the Winamplogo.

Clip art, animations (movies), andphotographs are dragged from theclip art window onto your screen.For sounds, you need to double clickthe sound and it will ask if you wantthe sound to play automatically ormanually. Automatically means itwill play in sequence with otheranimations you may set up.Manually means you must click onthe speaker icon to play the sound.This is up to you.

Here again are the tricks you can pull out of your hat when making presentations.

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

Sound Animation

PowerPoint Perception Three: A Picture Window to the WorldThe third way to perceive PowerPointis as a Picture Window to the World.This is the easiest way to get the mostout of PowerPoint. The idea of usingimagery has been covered above, butit's worth reinforcing.

Like I said at the beginning, "Show itand they will know it. "

In the past I bought all kinds of clip artCDs to have images to show. But withthe Internet at my fingertips, I can findimages much faster and of morevariety.

There's an interesting psychologybehind the size of images. If you showimages that are smaller than the screen,you simply see an image on the screen.Here I took a picture of a picturewindow. From this viewpoint I couldsee the scenery that was outside.However, when I got close to thewindow and it filled my field of view, itseemed I was now outside.Roll mouseover image. (You won't get the full effectbecause the image here does not fill the screen).

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

The trick then is to use full-screenimages whenever possible. Studentswon't just think they are looking at animage, but be transported to thatlocation.

BIGGER THAN LIFE

So, I usually show images full-screenfor full impact, then I bring in theinformation that goes with that image.(Roll mouse over image for the fissionequation.) Both photograph andequation are symbols of fission. Theimage, however, makes it more real andreaches you at an emotional level. That,combined with the details in theequation, makes for well-rounded andwell-retained knowledge.

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger Than LifeIn closing, I want to say I like puttingtogether presentations. By using the tipsI've covered, the presentation becomesenjoyable to me. If I enjoy it, I findstudents will too.

I also don't do all teaching with

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

PowerPoint; demonstrations and hands-on activities are used as well.Sometimes I even combine theatrics,PowerPoint, and demonstrations formore memorable presentations.

Again, PowerPoint is great at showingwhat is either too large to see, too smallto see, to fast to see, or simply not inthe classroom to be seen.

To see examples of PowerPointanimations, I've taken pieces of mypresentations and assembled them into ademo. I have a few other presentationsthat are also instructive.Download PowerPoint Demo (4 Meg)Download Hybridization PowerPoint (2 Meg)Download PV=nRT PowerPoint (4 Meg)Claisen Condensation PowerPoint (2 Megs)I have some other links on my CHM130 homepage.http://www.chemistryland.com/CHM130/chm130home.html

I store these materials at my site called,"Chemistryland" at the URL,www.chemistryland.com. My hope forthe future is that it will become a goodresource for students and teachers.

During the online conference, BrianPankuch asked some questions that Ithink is best answered with using aWeb page. The questions and responsescan be found here.

Thank you for reading this article onhow computers can be used in chemicaleducation. Thank you for reviewing the

PowerPoint: Showing Chemistry Bigger than Life

above PowerPoint examples. I hopeyou got some new ideas on how tomake better use of a tool you alreadyhave and are using.

You can email me atcostello@chemistryland.com

You can return to the Computer in Education Newsletter Home page with the below link.CCEN Newsletter Home Page for Fall 2005

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