Integrating knowledge across disciplines has been shown to be a challenging, and yet it is a necessary skill that university students need to develop. Students who are able to connect different concepts, perspectives, and angles of a given topic are generally more engaged and have better understanding. However, designing lesson plans or assignments that integrate knowledge across disciplines is a challenge to most instructors. This paper describes our effort to provide an interdisciplinary and independent assignment that couples topics from a Physical Chemistry course with skills taught in an Introductory Computing course. It was shown that such an interdisciplinary assignment, though done independently, can help to boost students' learning. However, it helps only in the understanding of certain aspects of the topics. We present the design of the assignment and the lessons learned for other instructors willing to adopt this kind of interdisciplinary approach.

Silver nanostructures have expansive applications in catalysis, photonic and electronic devices. In this work, nanostructured silver micro-colloids (MCs) with uniform in size and shape (size distribution <5%) were synthesized via rapid reduction of silver nitrate by ascorbic acid with controlled agglomeration and coalescence. We further propose that the formation of silver MCs was controlled by the chemical reaction kinetics which is governed by the concentration of reduced silver, Agº formed in solution. Preliminary electrical measurements of the highly conductive silver MCs demonstrated their potential application as inks for printed electronics.