Experiments with the integration of physics and chemistry in the freshman engineering curriculum

For the past three years as a member of the NSF Foundation Coalition, the University of Alabama has been developing an integrated freshman engineering curriculum. We describe here our experiments with integrating topics in physics and chemistry. Examples include error analysis and statistics, molecular collisions and the gas laws, wave interference and the analysis of crystal structure, and the Bohr model and the periodic table. The curriculum makes extensive use of computer tools such as Maple, Excel, and Interactive Physics, and teaming techniques are employed. We assess the merits and limitations of these attempts at integration