Water and Sun is the first introductory chemistry text to be completely green for both text and experiments.  The user has full note adding, highlighting and other privileges to the pdf version.  Furthermore, the pdf version allows quick movement with indices and key word searches.  So the text can be read and reactions and measurements carried out  without the use of any paper or chemicals.

  A print-ready version required a lot of hardware and software which I had to purchase and skills which I had to learn. I ultimately selected Adobe Framemaker to create the text. There are many figures and plots and animations for which I used Deneba Canvas, Adobe Photoshop and Curvus Pro.  Each chapter contains at least one video based exploration which are an integral part of the text. In these, students, in groups of two or three, take measurements of time, volume, voltage, length, color, etc. that I have videotaped specifically for support of portions of the text. To create these exercises which accompany the text required purchasing and learning to use Final Cut Pro, Infini D, Director MX and Lingo as well as a camcorder with a Progressive Scan mode. I discovered that “print ready” involves a lot more than just writing the text.

An advantage that electronic media can have is fast cross referencing to figures, tables and key words.  That has been incorporated into the current version with FrameMaker and Adobe Acrobat so the user can quickly go to a page containing a figure or  table and return with a single keystroke. I also added marginal bookmarks for quick access to parts of the text as well as allocate complete mark-up privileges using Adobe Acrobat Pro.  If the pdf version of the text has been transferred from the DVD to a changeable memory source such as a hard drive or a flash card, the user with Acrobat Reader, which is a free download, can underline text, highlight text and add notes to a page and these become a permanent part of the pdf file thus making it possible for a reader to mark up a computer version of the text just as could be done with a hard copy version.

I thought it would be useful to have the text formatted in a landscape aspect ratio so that it could be read easily on a computer screen although I expected the primary use would be as hard copy. What I did not anticipate ten years ago was how quickly students would have widespread access to computers, particularly their own laptops and the costly hard copy version could be avoided.

So the text has emerged as a DVD-based resource which contains

1. the pdf version of the book (13 chapters, 737 pages), with a table of contents, index and three appendices,

2. currently nineteen completed workshops/experiments, and

3. an introduction for how to use these features.

Furthermore, with today’s computers (Mac or PC), stand-alone, interactive core material for workshops and experiments as well as text can be activated simultaneously so the user can easily move back and forth between these screens as needed with a single keystroke. For example, one can have a spreadsheet for performing calculations for video experiment results, the projector which contains the experiment/workshop, and the pdf text that describes it, all accessible on the screen at the same time. While this presents an attractive, green-conscious vehicle for learning introductory chemistry, perhaps the most attractive feature for students is that this can all be provided at a fraction of the cost of a printed medium.  And by using gates such as those employed by CourseSmart for e-books, a publisher can still control its distribution.  The fact that today’s technology provides freedom from the intertia and cost of a paper-based medium opens up new distribution possibilities that did not exist before. There could be a website which keeps track of faculty users’ comments and perhaps maintains versions of the text that an editorial board could oversee. For example, there could be a version of the text that places more emphasis on geology or physics or policy.