STEAM night for Kennedy Academy (K-5th grades)

Just this past Thursday evening our College hosted a STEAM night in Northside Hall for the youngsters of Kennedy Academy. Our department was represented by Professors Muna, Clear, and Marmorino with much to display:

• Acid-base titrations with pinkish-purple phenolphthalein
• Testing the acidity and basicity of household products with cabbage juice
• Demonstrating ocean acidicification with dry ice, water, and cabbage juice
• Green-Red-Yellow transitions for a basic glucose solution due to indigo carmine
• Density tower of sugar solutions with different food coloring
• Illustrative Periodic Table with samples of elements and simple compounds

The children had a good time and showed a lot of interest in these activities. Some other hits at the event were an origami table where kids learned to fold a frog; various physics demonstrations including a geyser; and receiving a free yoyo with an image of a "spherical cow" (from the Physics department, of course).

Can a story plot carry more weight than a data plot?

One man's garbage is another man's treasure - and one man's lie is another man's truth. How can you bring someone around to your viewpoint? Maybe you shouldn't try unless you are also willing to change your stance. It is often said that people believe what they want to believe, regardless of the facts, so that arguments focusing on data may be less fruitful (for both parties) than other approaches. That's not to say you should debate with lies, of course. Instead, a friendly discussion of a fictional situation may allow for a less confrontational conversation. The science-fiction realm of Star Trek, for example, explores real-life scientific, social, ethical, religious, medical, and environmental issues in the context of fictional worlds - often with fictional races - which makes an analysis of the issues less personal between two parties by bringing in a fictional third party.

At the Public Library of Science (PLOS), microbiologist Maggie Fink and biochemist Dr. Shahir Rizk discuss the issue of combatting disinformation in a friendly, humble manner using "story plots", much like a Star Trek episode, rather than "data plots" that scientists are trained upon. We encourage you to read their thoughtful post which also touches on their conversations with flat-Earthers.

Rust Belt Science podcast

Earlier this month Professor Rizk and adjunct instructor Fink launched a podcast called Rust Belt Science sponsored by the University of Notre Dame, where Fink works as a Science Communication Postdoctoral Scholar. Their entertaining "conversations dive into how science connects to art, culture, mythology, and all other aspects of our daily lives."  Their podcast already has four episodes:

   (1) Meet the hosts

   (2) AI weirdness with Janelle Shane

   (3) Do you have to be smart to do science?

   (4) The ecology of everything with Deb Marr

You can find the podcasts here at RSS.com or on the University of Notre Dame's YouTube channel. Please check them out if you need some audio companionship while exercising - or if you just want to learn about science from these expert science communicators.

Marmorino's interactive tutorials for quantum mechanics

For many years, Professor Marmorino has been developing and using Mathematica to create tutorial programs that allow students to explore quantum mechanical phenomena in our upper-level CHEM-C 362 Physical Chemistry of Molecules course. There students explore the two-dimensional particle in a box, particle on a ring, the Bohr correspondence principle with the harmonic oscillator, the action of linear operators on functions, the non-linear variational method for a particle in one and two wells, the linear variational method for a hydrogenic atom, the bonding and anti-bonding molecular orbitals for the hydrogen molecular ion, hybrid orbitals, and the Hückel molecular orbital method. The image below shows the four molecular orbitals of cyclobutadiene generated as just part of the Hückel molecular orbital program.

Most recently, Marmorino has developed a new program to illustrate the time dependence of stationary states, and binary linear combinations of these, for a particle in a box.  Without the time dependence of wavefunction, it is hard to appreciate the wavefunction's "waviness" that is familiar to us in our classical experience of moving ocean waves. The program also allows one to investigate the transition from one stationary state to another and how this depends on the system's transition dipole moment. This program is available to the public through the Chemical Educator, which also published Marmorino's corresponding article on how various aspects of time dependence can be illustrated and investigated using the program.

Rizk and Fink publish protein book

The Color of North is the first book publication by a faculty member of our department. Our biochemistry professor, Dr. Shahir Rizk, spearheaded this general-audience project on proteins which combined his efforts (largely on a year-long sabbatical) with those of Dr. Maggie Fink while she was working toward her Ph.D. in microbiology at the University of Notre Dame. To write a book together, these two must obviously have a lot in common, but you may be surprised that they are both alumni of IU South Bend (Rizk, B.S. Biology; Fink, B.S. Biochemistry) and are actually both teaching here (Rizk, Assistant Professor; Fink, adjunct instructor). Their book is ready for pre-order and will be available for delivery in May. The following excerpt is taken from its listing at Amazon.com.  I'm very much looking forward to reading their book.

Taking us beyond the confines of our own experiences, The Color of North traverses the kingdom of life to uncover the myriad ways that proteins shape us and all organisms on the planet. Inside every cell, a tight-knit community of millions of proteins skillfully contort into unique shapes to give fireflies their ghostly glow, enable the octopus to see predators with its skin, and make humans fall in love. Collectively, proteins orchestrate the intricate relationships within ecosystems and forge the trajectory of life. And yet, nature has exploited just a fraction of their immense potential. Shahir Rizk and Maggie Fink show how breathtaking advances in protein engineering are expanding on nature’s repertoire, introducing proteins that can detect environmental pollutants, capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and treat diseases from cancer to COVID-19.

Weaving together themes of memory, migration, and family with cutting-edge research, The Color of North unveils a molecular world in which proteins are the pulsing heart of life. Ultimately, we gain a new appreciation for our intimate connections to the world around us and a deeper understanding of ourselves.

Dr. Grace Muna wins campus teaching award

This morning Grace Muna was presented with this year's campus-wide Distinguished Teaching Award along with cowinner David Blouin from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. She is pictured above with her plaque with Dean McMillen of the College of Arts and Sciences. Muna regularly teaches our second-semester general chemistry lecture, both general chemistry labs, and the upper-level analytical chemistry and instrumental analysis lecture/lab combination courses. Students appreciate Muna's sincere concern for them that has motivated many students to rise up from a poor start. Muna also insists on hand-graded homework which many students claim has helped them more so than online homework systems. In addition to her teaching role, Muna regularly involves students in her research projects and serves as the director for our campus's LSAMP program which provides funding from the National Science Foundation to minority students for summer research positions on campus mentored by our faculty. The last chemist who won this award was Gretchen Anderson in 1996. Congratulations, Dr. Muna!

Wanted: Octet Violators

Earlier this semester, freshman biology major Emma-Leigh Sheaks Osborn drew these wanted posters, perhaps to help warn her fellow classmates about these troublesome elements on one of their tests. Both boron (B) and beryllium (Be) are uncommon elements in early chemistry courses, but they do make a notable appearance when we study Lewis structures for their atypical bonding patterns in which they prefer to have fewer than an octet of valence electrons in molecular compounds. Emma-Leigh has a knack for both drawing and science and helps to liven up chemistry discussion class with good questions. Thanks for the drawings!