The University of Massachusetts Lowell is proud to be a leader in the development of innovative experiments for Physical Chemistry instructional laboratories. Whitten has obtained funding from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and the National Science Foundation to develop low cost spectroscopy experiments for chemical education. Many of these experiments employ diode lasers.
Diode lasers are inexpensive devices that retain many of the advantages of more traditional lasers. They are monochromatic and coherent, and their wavelength can be tuned by controlling their operating temperature. Recent breakthroughs in solid-state physics now make possible the mass production of new generations of blue and near-UV diode lasers that can serve as low-cost spectroscopy sources for physical chemistry experiments. With the aid of several undergraduate chemistry majors, Whitten has developed several experimental modules that have been dissminated to the national educational community and put in place in our teaching laboratories (courses 84.346 and 84.350).
Experiments that have been developed include demonstration of the photoelectric effect and measurement of Planck’s constant using different color diode lasers, the use of diode lasers to perform laser-induced fluorescence, and use of optogalvanic spectroscopy to study atomic spectroscopy. Recently, we also devised an experiment to measure the catalytic decomposition of gaseous ammonia by a hot tungsten filament using an infrared light-emitting diode and an infrared photodiode.
This work is continuing, and it is our goal to provide teachers around the country with opportunities to modernize their teaching laboratories at a low cost.