Feel the chemistry: students present at national meeting

May 5, 2012

Students from Ouachita’s American Chemical Society (ACS) student chapter went to the 243rd ACS National Meeting at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, Calif., from March 25-29. There, students presented the research they have done and participated in a Chemistry Demonstration Exchange (Chem Demo Exchange) as well as present an annual report on the student chapter’s activities during the past academic year.

“The American Chemical Society is a very large professional organization,” said Dr. Joe Jeffers, dean of the Patterson School of Natural Science. “Every spring we take students who have done research — as we’ve for 15 years now. The average attendance of those meetings will be 15,000-16,000. So we’re looking at academic chemists, industrial chemists, chemists of every type that attend these meetings.”

The meeting also hosts a large undergraduate symposium. Eleven Ouachita students who attended presented their research on a poster.

“In essence what they do is they stand by their poster, and as people come through they explain what they’re doing and answer questions — that’s the typical pattern,” Jeffers said.

In addition to the students, several professors also made presentations; Jeffers gave a “History of Chemistry” lecture.

Each of the ACS meetings has a different theme, and this spring’s theme was “The Chemistry of Life.” Jeffers’ presentation gave background information on how DNA was found as genetic material, and how the genetic code was developed.

“We flew out on Friday, and on Sunday morning we started with demonstrations,” said Kasa Cooper, a senior chemistry and biology major and president of Ouachita’s ACS student chapter. “Sunday night we got to go to the award ceremony and we got an award for all the things our ASC chapter did in the last year.”

At the Chem Demo Exchange, the ACS chapter had a table set up to show chapters the demonstrations that they do with children at local elementary schools.

“We did what we call ‘fireworks in a glass,’ which is where we mix water-based food coloring and oil on top of water,” Cooper said. “The food coloring and the oil goes down to the water and  looks like it is exploding. We also did [a demonstration] that we call ‘magic milk’ with food coloring and milk. We dip a Q-tip with stuff on it into the milk and it changes the way the food coloring interacts and makes it look like the food coloring is just running away from the Q-tip.”

Also at the conference, the students were also able to attend technical symposium sessions and lectures, including “Chemistry in a Cup o’Java,” where students learned about the chemistry in coffee, and “Nuclear Power Generation — Lessons from Fukushima, Daichi and Future Directions,” as well as an Eminent Scientist lecture. There were also a number of graduate schools represented.

“It allows them to see what chemists do outside of this academic bubble here at Ouachita,” Perry said. “It gives them the chance to present their own work in that environment and see that chemistry is a lot bigger than what we do here at Ouachita.”

 

Picture courtesy of Joe Jeffers.

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