I began producing these spreadsheets in 1995 and gave them the name "Interactive Spreadsheets". This is a somewhat silly name as by its very nature a spreadsheet is interactive, but I have stuck with it. What the name means is a spreadsheet that a student can interact with without having to enter a great deal of new data. Using primarily the tools in the Forms menu in Excel, arrows, sliders and radio buttons allow students to vary parameters of a calculation and see the results immediately and graphically. If they wish, they may change variables continuously.

How to make an interactive spreadsheet - a brief video describing how to make these spreadsheets

ABC kinetics - interactively plot concentration versus reaction extent for A, B and C in A -> B -> C by varying k values

angular overlap model - explore the angular overlap model for d-orbital splitting in complexes by designing various geometries of complexes and varying the parameters es and ep

blackbody radiation - expanded version of application found in general demonstrations example - show blackbody distribution at three temperatures

complexation of silver ion - explore the concentration of various silver species in ammonia as a function of ammonia concentration - can be generalized by varying the Ksp and formation constants interactively

distribution diagrams - calculate distribution diagrams of acid/base species for monoprotic through hexaprotic acids - can vary pKa values interactively

distribution of gas velocities - show distribution of velocities from Maxwell-Boltzmann equation for three different molecular weights at a constant temperature or one molecular weight at three temperatures - vary molecular weights and temperatures interactively

general complexation - explore the distribution of complex species as a function of the concentration of ligand X for MX_n with n = 1 - 6 by varying the formation constants

general demonstrations - includes a simpler gas velocity distribution example, the free energy versus reaction progress diagram at variable temperatures for the N₂0₄ <=> 2 NO₂ equilibrium - blackbody radiation distribution at variable temperatures

integrating the Gaussian distribution - use interactive sliders to perform one- and two-sided integrations of the Gaussian distribution - explore the origin of the statement that x % of results, in a large data set that is randomly distributed and obeys Gaussian statistics, should lie within +/- z standard deviations from the mean

photoelectric effect - expanded version of application found in general demonstrations example

reducing irreducible representations - interactive spreadsheet for reducing reducible representations of 12 common point groups

reversible kinetics - explore concentrations of A and B for A <=> B as a function of time by varying k values - also shows the reaction quotient, Q, and the ratio of Q/K

titration curves - calculates titration curves for monoprotic through tetraprotic acids - compare titration curves to distribution diagrams - interactively vary pKa values and watch titration curve change - vary initial volume of acid and concentrations of acid and strong base

tossing pennys - toss up to 100 pennies 100 times and explore the distribution of heads and tails, calculate the mean and standard deviation and compare to a theoretical Gaussian distribution for the same experiment

This Page Is Always Under Construction