Titrate over the Internet: An Open-Source Remote-Control Titration Unit for All Students

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing restrictions are in place in most public settings, and the undergraduate laboratory is no exception. In order to accommodate social distancing requirements, many laboratory exercises are being redeployed in an online format, which deprives students of experiential learning opportunities in a real laboratory setting. To bridge this experiential learning gap for online laboratory exercises, an open-source remote titration unit was created. This remote titration unit is based on a simple Raspberry Pi architecture equipped with a webcam and a servo (a small motor allowing fine control of angular position), allowing students to control the titration unit over the Internet with visual feedback of approximately a 0.5 s delay. Understanding that titrations are taught across all levels of chemistry, from high school to the postsecondary level, they are considered fundamental laboratory methods in analytical chemistry. In fact, titrations are the first analytical chemistry technique introduced to students, and the method holds a significant place in the chemistry curriculum. In response to the recent emphasis on virtual lab platforms due to COVID-19, the chemistry laboratory will need to evolve accordingly. The remote-control titration unit described here is an exemplar, showing that elements of experiential learning can be retained for online laboratory activities, and allows for the possibility of distanced learning that includes a meaningful laboratory component.

How Technologies Assisted Science Learning at Home During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Gan et al ( 2018 ) produced a system to simulate oxygen gas generation as hydrogen peroxide is oxidized by bleach, within an AR laboratory. Last, Soong et al ( 2021 ) prepared a remote-controlled titration system with which students could do actual titrations at the laboratory from their homes during the pandemic, which is not exactly AR but still it is a form of altered reality.…”

Automatic Extraction of Web Page Text Information Based on Network Topology Coincidence Degree

“…In formula (7), e im represents the weight of the ith feature item m in the web page text information e i . The vector 3 Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing space model represents the web page text information and query mode as a vector constructed with words as elements, and each word is weighted by word frequency and inverse text frequency.…”

“…However, the significant overload of text information on web pages has brought great difficulties to information extraction [6]. Due to the unstructured and disorderly nature of information, people generally can only use full-text extraction to find the required information, so that the webpage containing the required information is filled with a large number of advertisements and irrelevant links, and useful information and useless information are mixed together, increasing the difficulty of correct positioning information [7]. In order to deal with these problems, an automatic extraction technology is urgently needed to help people quickly find the information they really need from the mass of information.…”

Comprehensive Physical Chemistry Learning Based on Blended Learning: A New Laboratory Course

“…In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many universities to redesign their educational courses. − The impact of these changes is expected to be enormous across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The field of chemistry is no exception, especially regarding laboratory courses, in which students have lost most of the opportunities to acquire practical skills.…”

“…With recent developments in information technology, we have provided computational science capabilities and materials informatics capabilities: These basics can be demonstrated with well-known software such as Gaussian program package and Microsoft Excel. While there have been many excellent physical chemistry laboratory courses that deal with experiments, , calculations, ,− and data science independently, − we are not aware of any course that makes a strong connection among them. We hope that undergraduate chemistry students will have the means to acquire comprehensive knowledge of physical chemistry through our redesigned course.…”