William Davies Home Page

It is with sadness that we report the death of Bill Davies on August 30, 1997, after undergoing open heart surgery. He was 67 years old. His home page is being left on the Web for those who wish to review his extended effort to get those of us involved in educating chemists to use the concept of "chemical amount" instead of the less algebratically pure "number of moles." This effort evolved into an argument against teaching the dimensional analysis method in general. He put much effort into writing this article in the last few years and leaves it as a legacy for us to consider. We will miss him and the exuberance he showed for chemistry.

Quoting from the conclusion of his article, ".., the object has been to argue that the way stoichiometry is currently taught is full of inadequacies and inconsistencies, and that it is time that we changed it. At the same time the essentials of an alternative approach stressing quantities and their algebraic symbols has been proposed. The chief value of this approach is that it enables us to discuss the logic of each step in a stoichiometric calculation both in words and in symbols." This is an extremely well written discussion that you may wish to read in memory of Bill. After years of presenting these ideas at ACS meetings, he finally had put it all together in a form we can all appreciate. Ken Johnson

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Chemical Calculations
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Send comments about Bill or his article to trumperi@emporia.edu

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