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.