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GENERATION OF MORSE POTENTIALS USING WEBMO

Abstract

At Georgia Gwinnett College, non-science majors have to take a 7-credit sequence of either Biology or Physical Science (PSCI) as part of their General Education sequence. Recently, a PSCI course has primarliy focussed on digital/online activities to complete the lab requirement. This particular activity involves students using the WebMO (computational chemistry) website to conduct calculations and compile data in order to prepare a rudimentary Morse potential energy of the H-H bond, leading to a calculation of the equilibrium bond length of H-H. Initially, students are required to produce their own potential energies for each bond length. This is a group activity, where the students (a) collect their potential energies and (b) plot them using Excel. This activity focuses on establishing a group-oriented commitment to tracking and plotting data. The follow-up is then using the SCAN command to establish the same Morse potentials for a variety of different bond lengths. Going forward, this is planned as a project for non-science majours as an end-of-semester presentation. A similar activity could also be developed for upper-level computational courses.

Acknowledgements

UNG Dept. of Biology

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