Originally posted by Ozone
Will your students be required to take general Chemistry as well? If so, a grounding in the basics would make a course with a CJ focus much more
interesting. For example, If I was teaching a course like this in university, I would make it 4000 (senior/graduate) level and require general,
organic and analytical prerequisites. I suppose intro biochem could sub in.
Forensic Chemistry seems to me to be more of an application field, where a general knowledge base in Chemistry, Biology and physics would be required.
Barring this, *if* this is to be merely a hook to get students interested in Chemistry, I would advise using the SaA (shock and awe) principle. Here,
interesting experiments are broken down and explained in terms of the basic chemistry, physics and biochem involved.
A great example would be Luminol (using, say, cow blood or hell, some synthetic iron-fortified blood simulacrum). Here you get the "CSI" experience
(imagine the stuff glowing *without* the black light--a common boo-boo in CSI---Luminol involves a triplet transition state which yields blue
phosphorescence, directly) and can use this to explain the gnarly aspects pertaining to how the stuff works--organic chemistry, REDOX (Fe-H2O2), and
electronic transition states (singlet fluorescence-fast decay, triplet phosphorescence-slow decay, etc.).
What sort of equipement do you have available?
Cheers,
O3 |