Go to Introduction Go to Quick Looks Go to Conversations Go to Cases Go to Resources



Go to Quicklooks overview
Go to Quicklooks sorted by discipline
Go to Quicklooks sorted by institution type
Go to Quicklooks sorted by type of use
Go to Quicklooks sorted by author

Creating QuickTime Movies to Demonstrate Lab Experiments

Art Ellis
Professor of Chemistry
University of Wisconsin-Madison
ellis@chem.wisc.edu 		George Lisensky
Professor of Chemistry
Beloit College
lisensky@beloit.edu 		Jonathan Breitzer
Post doctoral Associate
University of Wisconsin-Madison
breitzer@chem.wisc.edu

Our use of technology has involved the creation of QuickTime web-accessible videos that demonstrate visually to our students (and to other instructors) how to set up lab experiments. We began using this technology when students were having difficulty creating ferrofluids in our "Ferrofluid synthesis and properties" lab.


Figure 1: A ferrofluid responding to a cow magnet
(see a video of the ferrofluids in action)

To address this, we filmed all the steps of the lab, converted them to QuickTime movies,

Materials Research Science and Engineering Center Education and Outreach
Nanoworld Cineplex
Materials Research Science and Engineering Center
Art Ellis' home page
George Lisensky's home page
WebCT
ChemLinks
Download QuickTime 5
added written explanations, and made these web-accessible. This conversion into video reduced several paragraphs of dense text to a sequence of easy-to-follow steps. Students really liked the videos describing the process; the videos helped them to understand each step of the lab and to know whether they were on the right track in creating the ferrofluid. The videos also made a difference in their success in the lab: we could tell which students had watched the videos by the ease with which they did the experiment.

In addition to the ferrofluids lab, we have created movies to demonstrate other lab experiments, such as the preparation of colloidal gold particles. These are available at the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center on Nanostructured Materials and Interfaces (MRSEC) website. The MRSEC is generously supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), where Art is the director of the education and outreach component. These lab experiments and the movies have been created for the purpose of bringing the excitement and results of research on nanoscale science and technology to students, teachers and the general public.

If you have any questions about the videos or the labs, you can contact Art Ellis at: ellis@chem.wisc.edu or George Lisensky at lisensky@beloit.edu.


Sort by: Discipline || Institution Type || Type of Use || Author


Introduction || Quick Looks || Conversations || Case Studies || Resources

Search || Who We Are || Site Map || Meet the CL-1 Team || WebMaster || Copyright || Download
College Level One (CL-1) Home || Collaborative Learning || FLAG || Learning Through Technology || NISE