Teaching Tips: Visualizing Bulk Flow in Mass Transfer with Dissolving Candy

This teaching tip describes an in-class activity that visualizes the difference between Fickian diffusion and bulk flow using SkittlesTM candy. Students are introduced to the concepts of concentration gradients, flux, and coordinate systems and encouraged to train their intuition by comparing expectations with observations.

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Publication Details

Journal
Chemical Engineering Education
Published
2024-12-16
DOI
https://doi.org/10.18260/2-1-370.660-137329
Primary Topic
Innovative Microfluidic and Catalytic Techniques Innovation
Type
article
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article

Teaching Tips: Visualizing Bulk Flow in Mass Transfer with Dissolving Candy

Maureen Tang
Chemical Engineering Education
Innovative Microfluidic and Catalytic Techniques Innovation
article

Teaching Tips: Visualizing Bulk Flow in Mass Transfer with Dissolving Candy

Maureen Tang
article en

Abstract

This teaching tip describes an in-class activity that visualizes the difference between Fickian diffusion and bulk flow using SkittlesTM candy. Students are introduced to the concepts of concentration gradients, flux, and coordinate systems and encouraged to train their intuition by comparing expectations with observations.

Chemical Engineering EducationVol. 59(2)
Drexel University (US)
Openalex Percentile: Top 79%
Innovative Microfluidic and Catalytic Techniques Innovation
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