Nov
12
12
Steve Ritter
Chem-E-Car Winners!
Posted by Steve Ritter on November 12, 2009 in Chemistry in the News
Northeastern University took top honors at the national Chem-E-Car competition held this week at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) national meeting in Nashville. The team’s car, called “The Aluminator,” was powered by a hydrogen fuel cell and defeated 30 other shoebox-sized cars.
Northeastern's "Aluminator"
The Chem-E-Car competition, first held in 1999, is a fun and practical way for chemical engineering students to apply their knowledge of ChemE principles while helping build interest and expertise in alternative fuels. Each year students design and build a car, then just before the competition begins they are handed the specifications for the race. In this year’s event, students were challenged to transport 250 mL of water 77 feet. Each team gets two chances to tweak its car’s power system to meet the race specs, with the team’s final score being its best attempt at meeting the established distance. Northeastern University came the closest to the finish line and received the top prize of $2,000.
Finishing second and taking home $1,000 was the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, using a decomposition reaction of hydrogen peroxide and potassium iodide. Third place and $500 went to Louisiana State University with its car powered by the acid-base reaction of citric acid with sodium carbonate.
Start thinking about next year.
Puerto Rico's "Coki Turbo"
LSU's "Swamp Thing"
Poster Ingenuity
Aug
28
28
Posted by Steve Ritter on August 28, 2009 in Where is C&EN?
In a sea of posters at a chemistry conference it is hard to stand out from the crowd. But graduate student Natalia Shustova of Colorado State University managed to do so at the combination 19th International Symposium on Fluorine Chemistry/3rd International Symposium on Fluorous Technologies this week with a 3-D presentation. Shustova’s research is on encapsulating metal atoms inside fullerenes that have fluorinated groups on the surface. She made a hemispheric fullerene model out of colored poster board, leaving the fullerene structure’s hexagons in place but cutting out the pentagons. In that way the scandium atoms trapped inside the fullerene, represented by balloons, were visible. She placed the details of her research on pieces of paper mounted on the hexagons. In the photo, Shustova chats with Konrad Seppelt of Free University of Berlin.
Time Out
Aug
28
28
Posted by Steve Ritter on August 28, 2009 in Where is C&EN?
Organizers of the fluorine conferences taking place in Grand Teton National Park this week did a lot of thinking ahead when planning the technical sessions. Fluorine meetings tend to be a bit relaxed, and fluorine chemists a bit verbose, with speakers running over their allotted time and ensuing discussions dragging things out even further. But with so many lectures on the schedule, the organizers knew they had to keep speakers on time.
Typically a session chair at a conference will give a little warning to the speaker or stand up when their time is running out. At the fluorine conferences the organizers are trying a different approach: electronic timers. A clock is set by a conference staff member at the beginning of a talk, so that the speaker sees exactly how much time they have remaining. A beeper goes off with five minutes remaining, and again when time runs out.
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Fluorine With A Flourish
Aug
27
27
Posted by Steve Ritter on August 27, 2009 in Where is C&EN?
This week the 19th International Symposium on Fluorine Chemistry and the 3rd International Symposium on Fluorous Technologies are taking place jointly at Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Imagine taking a premier collection of scientific presentations and holding them in a vacation setting, and that is what we have here.
Some 300 of the world’s leading fluorine chemists are in attendance, representing 24 different countries. Besides great chemistry, what drew these scientists to the conference is the backdrop of the Grand Teton Mountain Range. The mountains are a constant presence, mesmerizing. People flock to the front of the lodge and just stand in the Rocky Mountain sunshine and rarified air and stare. It doesn’t matter if you have stared at the Tetons before; you can’t help coming back for more.
Then there is the threat of wildlife at any moment—grizzly and black bears, moose, elk, pronghorn antelope, and wolves. Even on the first night of the conference a brown bat got into the lodge and swooped over people’s heads. Of course big animal sightings are rare and most people settle for watching squirrels and song birds. Then they look up at the Tetons again.
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Pittcon Shuffle: No Thinking Required
Mar
13
13
Posted by Steve Ritter on March 13, 2009 in Where is C&EN?
Another Pittcon has come and gone. Despite the economic woes of the world, total attendance for the week was about 18,000. That’s less than usual in recent years, but it is hard to say if it is a continuation of the ongoing downward trend for Pittcon or not–specialized instrumentation meetings have been siphoning away Pittcon regulars. Still, the array of instruments, lab supplies, and gizmos on display on the expo floor was as plentiful as ever. And it did not appear that many companies that signed up to display their wares pulled out at the last minute.
Pittcon attendees like me who crawl up one aisle of instruments and down another hit a zone after awhile–the Pittcon shuffle, we’ll call it. One booth after another becomes a blur, you lose the ability to decide if you want to stop to check out something or just keep shuffling, one foot after the other over thin carpet, thick carpet, faux wood flooring, concrete–it doesn’t matter. Not even bowls of candy or a cute tchotchke fazes you after 
awhile. By the way, my favorite trinkets this year: CEM’s crazy Dave beany hat and calendar, and Shimadzu’s Mr. Roboto 1 GB memory stick.
If one could generalize and say there were any noticeable trends this year, it was that there appeared to be fewer new products unveiled. That doesn’t bode well for the economy, if it is true that technological innovation is a driver of future economic growth. (more…)
What’s Shaking At Pittcon
Mar
10
10
Posted by Steve Ritter on March 10, 2009 in Where is C&EN?
Bells and whistles sometimes make a difference for a salesperson clinching a sale with a waffling customer. Walking around the expo hall here at Pittcon 2009 in Chicago is no different. I have been hearing one good story after another.
I’d say my favorite so far comes from Shimadzu, which has an earthquake sensor on its new AA-7000 series atomic absorption spectrophotometers (one shown). An earthquake sensor, you are thinking; what the heck? Actually, it makes a lot of sense.
Atomic absorption spectroscopy involves aspirating a liquid sample containing a metal analyte of interest into a flame, where the sample is atomized and then a light beam passing through the flame to a detector provides the means of identifying and quantifying the metal in the sample.
Shimadzu is a Japanese-based company, and Japan is a land of earthquakes and tsunamis (the Shimadzu Scientific Instruments division is based in Columbia , Md., however).
So what would happen to an open flame fueled by a flammable gas during an actual earthquake? Well, potentially the same thing as a ruptured gas main during an earthquake–a big fireball. So the new AA-7000 series, besides being a top-quality set of AA instruments, is reportedly the first to have a sensor that automatically shuts off the flame and gas supply when it feels a little rumble, hopefully keeping flames at bay and not burning down the house.
Pittcon Is On
Mar
9
9
Posted by Steve Ritter on March 9, 2009 in Where is C&EN?
The Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry & Applied Spectroscopy, a.k.a. Pittcon, is taking place in Chicago this week. The technical program and exposition, which includes everything under the sun to do with a lab or analytical instrumentation, are in full swing with some 15,000 people in attendance.
You would think that some gee-whiz new instrument would have attracted my attention on the first day of the show, but instead I became fascinated with Dura Flock nitrile gloves (shown).
Disposable gloves are indispensible in the lab for protecting the hands against chemicals–although they aren’t foolproof. Gloves that are comfortable and allow you to have a good feel for what you are doing are hard to come by.
Now, MicroFlex, the self-proclaimed “most trusted name in gloves,” has come out with the innovative new Dura Flock glove that is unique for being the first “flock-lined” disposible glove–the gloves have a fine layer of cotton on the inside to absorb moisture to keep hands dry (powder doesn’t always work) and improve grip. Flock-lined gloves aren’t new, but these are cost-worthy enough to be disposible. And trying them on, they feel pretty good.
A product like Dura Flock gloves normally wouldn’t make it into C&EN, but this is an interesting bit of the Pittcon sideshow that bears mentioning. Besides, as part of the marketing program, which plays on rocking in the lab with the gloves and rock-and-roll music, Microflex staff set up Guitar Hero for attendees to take a break and play as they visit the company’s booth on the Pittcon expo floor, with or without Dura Flocks protecting their hands.
Welcome To The Chinese New Year
Jan
26
26
Posted by Steve Ritter on January 26, 2009 in Chemistry is Everywhere
Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year, and 2009 is the Year of the Ox. To celebrate, chemists in the U.K.–not at Oxford as you might think, but rather at the University of Nottingham–have produced a video describing the chemistry surrounding tea, a staple in China and in the U.K. by extension of its colonial days in Asia. The Nottingham chemists are the ones who devised the popular Periodic Table of Videos last year.
In the new video, chemistry professor Martyn Poliakoff describes different types of teas and a few chemical details about tea that are surprising to know. Chemistry knows no bounds.
The Hybrids Are Coming, The Hybrids Are Coming …
Jan
9
9
Posted by Steve Ritter on January 9, 2009 in Uncategorized
In the midst of an extended power outage in Boston during a recent winter storm, in lieu of a generator an enterprising man hooked up his house to his Toyota Prius hybrid electric car (a Prius plug-in hybrid is shown). According to the Boston Herald, John Sweeney of Harvard, Mass., has provided a tantalizing glimpse of the future.
Sweeney, an electrical engineer, told the Boston Business Journal that he used an inverter to convert direct current from the car’s battery to 120 V alternating current that kept the refrigerator, freezer, fan for a wood stove, television, and some lights running. Leaving the car turned on, the engine ran for a few minutes every half hour to recharge the battery and burned about 5 gal of gas over three days while producing about 17 kWh of electricity, Sweeney said. That’s not very efficient, but during a power outage it’s somewhat irrelevant.
Hybrids like Sweeney’s, and the next-generation plug-in hybrids, appear to be the cars of the near future, as major automakers are gearing up to start producing them in greater numbers. Perhaps no one thought of all the potential uses of hybrid cars, besides driving them and saving on gas. It’s all possible because of chemistry, of course. The secret is in the materials used to make the car batteries.
Celebrating Fred Hawthorne
Oct
22
22
Posted by Steve Ritter on October 22, 2008 in Uncategorized
Some of the biggest names in chemistry have gathered this week at the University of Missouri, Columbia, for a symposium to celebrate the opening of the International Institute of Nano & Molecular Medicine. This institute is the culmination of a lifetime of work by chemist M. Frederick Hawthorne, the 2009 Priestley Medalist, ACS’s highest honor. 
During his nearly 60-year career, which includes stints at Rohm and Haas, UC Riverside, and UCLA, Hawthorne and his colleagues have created a diverse collection of boranes and spin-off compounds, including the carboranes, such as C2B10H12, and the metallacarboranes, such as Ni(C2B9H12)2. Hawthorne has put these compounds to work in applications as varied as medical imaging, drug delivery, neutron-based radiation treatments for cancers and rheumatoid arthritis, catalysis, and nanomachines.
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