In case you're wondering what's happening on the North end of Hays Hall this week, here is a glimpse into the labs:

 The non-majors Chemistry class (Che 101) is working on a unit about drugs and how they work. So what better thing to do than make aspirin!  Here, Economics major Stephen Popovich '10 admires his unpurified product.  Along with its synthesis from salicylic acid, students also evaluated their products by testing for the presence of the reactant phenolic group with iron chloride, took its melting point, and made a second ester, methyl salicylate, which smells like wintergreen.

 In Chemistry 111 (the former Chem 3), students determined the identity of an unknown liquid by determining the molecular weight of its vapor.  They spiked their samples with rhodamine (which fluoresces pink) to be able to better determine when it was completely converted to a vapor.  PV=nRT to the rescue!

In Organic 1 (Che 221), students investigated whether a reaction  of alcohols with competing halogens proceeded via a S_N1 or a S_N2 mechanism.  If it's  S_N1 , the rate determining step is cation formation, and an equal amount of the chlorinated and brominated product should be formed.  If it's S_N2, the nucleophile plays a role in the rate limiting step, and there should be a significant difference in the amount of chlorinated and brominated product.  The students used gas chromatography to determine the ratio of products.  Like in all our labs, students operate all the equipment themselves...with fingers crossed that they get results that make sense!

  Che 351, Physical Chemistry, uses a round robin approach.  Every partnership works on a different experiment in a given week, then they rotate to another experiment until they have completed the entire set.  This week they designed their own experiments.  Students were using the bomb calorimeter, conducting infrared spectroscopy on HCl and DCl, and doing a couple other experiments, including the one pictured here, where Jon O'Donnell '10 and Lucas Evans '12 are studying bubble formation, with hopes of looking at light scattering on bubbles.  When they're done, the students will write a report in the form of a scientific paper, so there is significant amounts of data analysis to come!

 Independent  projects were also in progress in Che 441, Advanced Inorganic.  They ranged from the synthesis of a chiral cobalt compound to the synthesis of cis-platin, a chemotherapy reagent.  These are complex, multi-week syntheses, and the students will be characterizing their products over the next several weeks.  Here, Jasper Small '10 and Gabriel Stancu '10/11 are making dilutions in preparation for their next step.

 So it was a typical week in the Wabash Chemistry labs--students working in teams, using a variety of instruments and techniques to conduct syntheses, analyze samples and solve problems.   

Posted by Ann Taylor at 11:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Something is missing from the end of the hall.

Merlin Liu, '10, has been camped out in the study nook on the north end of the second floor of Hays since he returned from his summer internship before the semester began.  I often see him eating lunch there, studying, sleeping pondering deeply, with his laptop and a large stack of books.

But now the table is empty (though the pile of books remains). Both Merlin and Brandon Hirsch, '10, took the Chemistry subject area GRE (Graduate Record Exam) last weekend.  The subject area test specifically measures a student's knowledge of chemistry, and is used both for prestigious graduate school scholarships such as the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship Program and admission to some graduate programs (all require the general GRE).

Brandon is planning to go to graduate school next fall and study either analytical or inorganic chemistry, wth the intention of becoming a professor someday. He is currently in the process of applying to multiple graduate schools and hopes to be finished by early December.  When I asked him how it went, he commented, "Wabash prepared me with a solid foundation of the basics, which I was able call upon for the test."

When I asked Merlin the same question, his initial response was the way I felt after taking the test--exhaustion and confusion.  But he elaborated, "When I reviewed what we learned, everything became much clear and easier than it used to be. Especially organic chemistry, which gave me a very hard time two years ago.  The mechanisms ran smoothly like movies in my brain and I did not even need to draw the products on paper."

Wow.  Talk about internalizing chemistry!  Just like you know you really are fluent in a language when you dream in it, Merlin is dreaming in mechanisms. 

I have a feeling Merlin will soon return to "his" study table, as comprehensive exams are looming soon.  But in the meantime, congrats to both Brandon and Merlin on a job well done, and best wishes on your grad school admissions process!

Posted by Ann Taylor at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bcl, Bax, EGFR, Ras, CDK, pINK...the proteins involved in cancer seem like an alphabet soup.  But yesterday the Chemistry of Cancer class highlighted what they've about the genes and proteins associated with cancer.

In the 1970's, President Nixon declared "war on cancer", and the search for a "magic bullet" began.  As we've learned more about how cells sense their environment and decide to grow (or commit "cellular suicide"), we've also learned that cancer is not a single disease, so there isn't a single cure.  For a cell to become cancerous, there must be at least mutations in two different types of proteins--one to trigger inappropriate cell growth, as well as the loss of a growth repressor.  These mutations usually occur in proteins involved in one of three main processes in the cell:  signal transduction, which is the way the cell senses environmental cues to grow; the cell cycle, which is the process by which a cell divides into two daughter cells; and apoptosis, or programmed cell death of cells with problems in their DNA replication or other stages of cell division.

The ten members of the class each focused on a single protein involved in cancer.  They developed a Proteopedia page, highlighting both the structure and function of their proteins.  They presented their results yesterday at lunch.

Their findings are also available to the wider scientific audience through the pages they authored on Proteopedia.  If you'd like to learn more about their projects, visit the class Proteopedia page.

Posted by Ann Taylor at 02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)