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Education & Academic

Pandemic-Inspired Innovations Make for the Best Wolfram Summer School Yet

For more on Wolfram’s summer education programs, read our post about the Wolfram Summer Camp.

The 18th annual Wolfram Summer School has just thrown its graduation party in High Fidelity, a virtual world augmented with spatial audio. Students and faculty sang together during karaoke with a DJ and jukebox, chatted away mixing techspeak and humor, said farewells and had a ball celebrating the completion of the program. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we chose to make our summer programs more accessible to the students and faculty from all corners of the world—this year from 25 countries and all populated continents.

Education & Academic

The Math(s) Fix: Try a Sample Lesson! Self-Study, Problem-Solving Learning Resources

As Conrad Wolfram writes in his new book, education in computational thinking and quantitative problem solving are largely absent from today’s mathematics curricula. With the current crisis changing education practice in many ways, what better time to try out a sample of our new curriculum? It’s a curriculum fit for learners who want to be better prepared for an AI age where computers can be used to their full potential.

It’s a beta release, a first sample manifestation of what can be deployed in a self-study mode to implement The Math(s) Fix. We’re stretching what can be done in a browser to the limit, so please be patient with refresh times. The content and intended learning outcomes are the key points to look out for; you can see how we’ve merged the learning of general "thinking" outcomes and computation outcomes with real contexts in accessible problems.

Education & Academic

Released Today: The Math(s) Fix

Wolfram Research has always believed in the power of computation to deliver better decisions. But there are two sides to achieving this: not only the best computational technology but also the best education for computational thinking.

After more than 15 years of conceptualising the idea, 10 years of build-out and 2 years of writing and editing, I have assembled The Math(s) Fix: An Education Blueprint for the AI Age (or TMF for short) and thrown it out to the world today in ink and e-ink.

Education & Academic

Quantum Chemistry: Step-by-Step Chemistry Series

After working our way through chemical reactions, solutions and structure and bonding, we close out our step-by-step chemistry series with quantum chemistry. Quantum chemistry is the application of quantum mechanics to atoms and molecules in order to understand their properties.

Have you ever wondered why the periodic table is structured the way it is or why chemical bonds form in the first place? The answers to those questions and many more come from quantum chemistry. Wolfram|Alpha and its step-by-step chemistry offerings won’t make the wave-particle duality any less weird, but they will help you connect chemical properties to the underlying quantum mechanical behavior.

The step-by-step solutions provide stepwise guides that can be viewed one step at a time or all at once while working through a problem. Read on for example problems covering orbital diagrams, frequency and wavelength conversions, and mass-energy equivalence.

Education & Academic

Structure and Bonding: Step-by-Step Chemistry Series

We’re back this week with more chemistry, to explore molecular structure and bonding with Wolfram|Alpha and its step-by-step chemistry offerings. Read more on chemical reactions and solutions from previous weeks, and join us next week for our final installment on quantum chemistry!

Structure and bonding in chemistry refer to where the atoms in a molecule are and what holds those atoms together. Molecules are held together by chemical bonds between the atoms comprising the molecule. Understanding the interplay between molecular structure and the electrons involved in bonding is what facilitates the design of new molecules, the control of chemical reactions and a better understanding of the molecules around us.

To master structure- and bonding-related calculations, the step-by-step solutions provide stepwise guides that can be viewed one step at a time or all at once. Read on for example problems covering Lewis structures, oxidation numbers and orbital hybridization.

Education & Academic

Chemical Solutions: Step-by-Step Chemistry Series

Last week, we kicked off a four-part series on Wolfram|Alpha's step-by-step chemistry offerings with chemical reactions. Future posts will cover chemical structure and bonding along with quantum chemistry. We continue this week with chemical solutions, another foundational component of all chemistry classes.

From the blood in your veins to the oceans covering the planet, solutions are everywhere! Understanding their chemical properties is essential to sustaining life, creating new materials and treating illness. As such, disciplines ranging from biology to material science to the health professions all must be comfortable doing solution-related computations.

To master such calculations, the step-by-step results provide stepwise guides that can be viewed one step at a time or all at once. Read on for example problems covering solute concentration, solution preparation, pKa and colligative properties.

Best of Blog

Chemistry Step-by-Step Solutions: Chemical Reactions

If you’re studying chemistry or are in a discipline requiring chemistry prerequisite courses, then you know how expensive the required textbooks can be. To combat this, the chemical education community has developed open educational resources to provide free chemistry textbooks. However, although free textbooks keep cash in your wallet, they don’t include solution guides for all the homework problems.

Luckily, the Step-by-Step Solutions feature of Wolfram|Alpha has got your back! Whether you’re studying remotely or collaborating via video conferencing, Wolfram|Alpha helps you learn and apply the problem-solving frameworks for chemical word problems. The step-by-step solutions provide stepwise solution guides that can be viewed one step at a time or all at once. The guides not only hone efficient problem solving, but also facilitate digging deeper into concepts that might still be murky.
Education & Academic

Advancing Coding Skills, Teamwork & Computational Thinking at the Wolfram Emerging Leaders Program

Computational thinking is an increasingly relevant and important skill to develop. The ability to break down problems into their component parts, and to piece together a solution quickly and accurately, is important for a variety of careers and pursuits in the 21st century. Even more important, perhaps, is that this skill enables you to express ideas clearly enough so that even a computer can understand them.
Education & Academic

Stay Connected with Wolfram Study Group Sessions, Livestreams and More

Remote work. Distance learning. Virtual events. These terms are becoming more commonplace as quarantines and stay-at-home orders continue and folks practice social distancing. While brainstorming how best to contribute to our customers around the world during these unusual times, we’ve generated a ton of data resources, analytics, free access to technology and much more.

However, these resources were still missing a deeper level of collaboration and interaction—the simple power of people coming together to connect, work and learn. With that in mind, here are some more group-oriented offerings to help keep you connected and in touch with one another, even in the new landscape of an almost entirely virtual world.