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Conceptual thinking versus plug-and-chug problem solving: Radiocarbon dating and interactive animated spreadsheets

Conceptual thinking versus plug-and-chug problem solving: Radiocarbon dating and interactive animated spreadsheets. Scott A. Sinex and Barbara A. Gage Prince George’s Community College. Presented at ACS MARM, College Park, MD, May 2011. The classic decay equation. P  D

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Conceptual thinking versus plug-and-chug problem solving: Radiocarbon dating and interactive animated spreadsheets

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  1. Conceptual thinking versus plug-and-chug problem solving: Radiocarbon dating and interactive animated spreadsheets Scott A. Sinex and Barbara A. Gage Prince George’s Community College Presented at ACS MARM, College Park, MD, May 2011

  2. The classic decay equation P  D parent daughter So do we just plug-and-chug out some ages? where P = number of parent nuclei, Po = parent number at t = 0, t = time, and k = rate (decay) constant

  3. How do the General Chemistry textbooks do? Today’s discussion

  4. So can we approach the topic of radiocarbon dating from the conceptual thinking direction and in an interactive fashion using spreadsheets?

  5. The radioactive decay concept http://academic.pgcc.edu/~ssinex/excelets/age_dating_3.xls

  6. The Po assumption in radiocarbon dating

  7. The input-output model

  8. Dating and possible uncertainties

  9. Assessment… Eight questions – maximum score of 30 points

  10. Student Survey Feedback (n = 24 students)

  11. In the end… • A more conceptual approach • Numerical experimentation • Higher-order questions addressed • More science process • and it appears students liked it

  12. More on radiometric dating Excelets Radiometric dating – D/P methods Radiocarbon dating http://academic.pgcc.edu/~ssinex/excelets/chem_excelets Sinex, S.A. (2010) Radiometric Dating for Novice Learners: Visualizing, Modeling, and Simulating via Animated Spreadsheets, Spreadsheets in Education4 (2), Article 5

  13. More info… Scott Sinex ssinex@pgcc.edu http://academic.pgcc.edu/~ssinex Barb Gage bgage@pgcc.edu http://academic.pgcc.edu/~bgage Thanks for attending!!!

  14. excelets

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