Development of a Suite of Virtual Experiments for Physics and Chemistry Undergraduate Laboratories

Remote Labs have been able to provide students and instructors with the avenue to perform experiments anytime. Several virtual laboratories are readily available on the internet some of which were also developed by the iLab OAU team. However, most of the virtual laboratories developed are focused on desktops and also require the installation of one or two plugins for runtime for the execution. Inadequate funding and lack of equipment are the bane of undergraduate laboratory practice in Physics and Chemistry. If it is possible for students to have virtual equivalents of these experiments, they can easily perform them on-line thereby increasing their understanding and speed of completion if and when they get to the real lab. Using Physics and Chemistry laboratory manuals of freshmen at a university, the authors have developed virtual laboratories for selected experiments. These include Calorimetry (Specific Heat Capacity and Latent Heat of Fusion of Ice), Ohm’s law, pH measurement and Acid-base Titration. This work involveda synergy of faculties in Physics, Chemistry, Electronics and Computer Engineering. This paper presents three of the developed experiments. The idea is to eventually upgrade all of the designed experiments in the future to a MOOCs suite that a number of universities can use.