Dr Lee Chee Huei and Dr Tan Mei Xuan presented their pedagogical approach to their courses – Physics 2 and Introduction to Physical Chemistry during the SUTD Pedagogy Day 2019.
Physics 2
The main agenda of the presentation is to highlight students’ achievement from Physics 2 1D Design projects. Over the years, several themes of projects were introduced, including electrical power generator, prototype or teaching kit for teaching and learning electromagnetism, as well as hand-made AM radio. One outstanding project was the hand-made electrical guitar to demonstrate the application of Faraday’s Law.
SUTD Physics team also developed an AM radio design project that involves multiple concepts of electromagnetism. Students are required to build a hand-made capacitance, a hand-made speaker and an inductor to form a LC circuit to receive an AM channel broadcasted in their classroom. Through an audio amplifier, students receive a musical channel to playback using their own speaker.
Recently, Physics 1D project has been spinning off multiple outreach activities through collaboration with Office of Admission. We are also exploring deeper collaboration with high schools or secondary schools to develop meaningful STEM design projects for pre-tertiary students to embrace SUTD hands-on pedagogy and to increase students’ interest in pursuing science and technology as their future career in Singapore.
Introduction to Physical Chemistry
Students worked in groups of 4 in the 1D project of 10.011 Introduction to Physical Chemistry to build a Fruit Battery.
The highlight of this design project is “self-directed learning” and “optimization”. Students are expected to read up and research about fruit batteries in their own group, and apply the concepts that they have learnt in Electrochemistry. The students can choose to build the fruit battery from a variety of metal electrodes and LEDs below.
Each group is given a virtual credit of $10. The objective is to light up the LED and obtain the highest points based on the following:
Total Points = ½ (voltage of the LED) x (10 – cost of your electrochemical cell) + 10
Fruits/Vegetables ($0.50 each) Metals
($0.50 each) LEDs
($1 each) Miscellaneous
1x Lemon 1x Iron electrode Green 2V Voltmeter
1x Potato 1x Copper electrode Red 2V 4 Gator clips ($1)
1x Apple 1x Magnesium electrode White 3.2 V pH meter
1x Orange 1x Zinc electrode Blue 4 V Sandpaper
1x Grapefruit 1x Aluminum electrode
1x Kiwi 1x Steel electrode
