Moving Labs Online

The coronavirus threat has nearly closed our campus and spring break has been extended one week to allow instructors time to adapt to teaching their lecture courses online for the rest of the semester. But what about laboratory classes? Laboratory Director Connie Fox came up with the solution to videotape someone performing the remaining experiments. So during spring break, Laboratory Assistant Brenda Beatty prepared the chemicals for each experiment and then the dynamic duo of Fox (as experimenter and narrator) and adjunct instructor Merilee Britt  (as camerawoman) took over and performed one experiment after another with help from adjunct instructor Clark Hartford on a few experiments. In just a few days of extraordinary effort they processed about ten experiments to handle the last month in our C121, C125, and C126 laboratory courses. This week, Professor Kasey Clear is following their example to deal with the remainder of his organic chemistry laboratory. Moving to all online courses has been - and will continue to be - a difficult task for both faculty and students. Thanks to everyone for their patience and diligence.

Chemistry major presents at two conferences

Chemistry major Brianna Jones was awarded an LSAMP grant this past summer to research with Professor Grace Muna for eight weeks. Jones used our MP-AES (microwave plasma atomic emission spectrometer) to analyze the mineral and organic content of blueberries to determine whether there were significant differences between organic and typical blueberries.  Last fall she presented her conclusions and discussed her methods at a conference in Indianapolis with several other students, but in just the last week Jones attended two conferences in Chicago to further disseminate her research. Pictured left is Jones at the 2020 Illinois LSAMP Symposium and to the right she is shown at Pittcon 2020. It is great to see students like Jones excited about their research and eager to tell others about the hard, but rewarding, work they have done. The abstract of her work is given below.

Phenolic Compounds and Mineral Content Determination in Organic

and Conventional Blueberries: A Comparison Study

Brianna Jones and Grace Muna

Blueberries have high level of antioxidants compared to other fruits and vegetables due to their phenolic content. However, many people wonder if organic blueberries are actually healthier than conventional blueberries. To investigate the nutritional differences a Folin-Ciocalteu reagent was used to develop a method to determine the phenolic content. A microwave plasma emission spectroscopy method was also developed to determine the mineral content. Results show that conventional and organic blueberries contain relatively the same amount of phenolic compounds. In addition, among the minerals tested, sodium, zinc, magnesium, calcium, copper and potassium, organic and convention blueberries compares very well, with exception of  calcium and potassium which was found to be slightly high in organic blueberries. Results from the phenolic and mineral content determination will be presented.