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Congratulations to these 2006-2007 Chemistry Student Award Winners

The St. Olaf Chemistry Department is honored to present

Organic Chemistry Student of the Year Sean B. Johnston

The St. Olaf Chemistry Department is honored to present

First Year Chemistry Student of the Year Award Michael T. Marty

October 2007 Faculty Advisor: Beth Abdella, Editors: Karen Renneke and Erin Kinney

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SOCS Celebrates Mole Day at Cedar Park Elementary

On Mole Day, Tuesday October 23rd (10/23) first year students Allison Beardsley and Peter Meng presented four thirty-minute chemistry demonstration shows to groups of fourth and fifth grade students at Cedar Park Elementary School in Apple Valley, Minnesota. The show was part of the St. Olaf Chemistry Students' (SOCS) mission to reach out to the community in an effort to promote good will and excite younger students about chemistry and sci-ence in general. The show began with a "magic" trick in which Peter ig-nited a flask of ordinary water. Little did the students know that he had previously placed a small amount of hexanes into the bottom of the flask. The hexanes floated to the top and were ignited by the flame. The students learned about matter, observations and combustion reac-tions. Next, Allison demonstrated a vigorous combustion reac-tion using nitrocellulose. As she touched a hot glass rod to a small sample of nitrocellulose the rapid and vigorous combustion reaction produced an audible WHOOSH! a flash of light and screams of delight from the students. This was a crowd favorite. Shouts of "Do it again" could be heard from down the hall. The show continued with an illustration of an oxida-tion/reduction reaction where luminol was oxidized in the presence of sodium hydroxide to produce an eerie blue light. The students also had the hands-on opportunity to participate in a titration race; they blew carbon dioxide into a basic solution containing Universal Indicator. The dramatic color change from purple to bright yellow indi-cated the presence of acid in the solution. Prizes were awarded to the participants. Finally fun physical properties of matter were demon-strated using racquetballs, balloons and liquid nitrogen. Shocking, one fifth-grader knew that liquid nitrogen was -325ºF! Peter and Allison came away from the event completely excited about continuing a chemistry outreach program to other schools. They intend to contact Northfield schools and arrange a visit in the near future. If anyone else

would be interested in taking chemistry on the road, con-tact SOCS. -Greg Muth

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National Chemistry Week was October 22—26th

SOCS Sponsored Events Were

• Monday: Kick off “Hunt for the Golden Beaker” • Tuesday: Coloring Contest Starts Mole Day! • Wednesday: Dinner with the Profs • Friday:Demo Day—Profs share their favorite demo’s.

Starts at 2:15 with announcing the winner of the color-ing contest.

SOCS (St. Olaf Chemistry Society) Officers: Lauren Kunz President Emma Vanderwell Vice President Alyssa Zuehl Secretary Dan Kohler Treasure If you would like to be on the executive email alias to help plan events, please contact Lauren Kuntz at kunz@stolaf.edu. Ideas for chemistry events are always welcomed!

Coloring contest prizes were given out. It was a difficult decision, as they were all very well done.

Z finds the Golden Beaker. Beaker location; football field. Z had a little trouble with this, as he is color blind, and gold appears green. Kudos to Z!

Great balls of fire….. Bob! What kind of gas does that?

Ok, apply pressure to the ball and make the bub-bles come out where?

Dr. Han-son dem-onstrates methane gas, bub-bles and fire?

Have you ever been in a race like this one?

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November Chemistry Seminar’s

Seminars are in SC 378 at 3:15 p.m. with re-

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

1 Keith Beyer

U of W, La-Crosse

http://www.uwlax.edu/faculty/Kbey

2 Dave Johnson

Univ. of TX, Anto-nio

http://www.utsa.edu/chem/Graduat

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4 5 6 7 8 9 Josef Werne

Large Lakes Ob-servatory

http://www.d.umn.edu/llo/people/

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11 12 13 14 15 Donald M. Can-non Jr.

The University of Iowa

http://www.chem.uiowa.edu/facult

16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 Grigoriy A. Sereda

Univ. of South Dakota

http://www.usd.edu/~gsereda/

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Chemistry Department 1520 St. Olaf Avenue

Northfield, MN 55057 Phone: 507-646-3104

Fax: 507-646-3968 Email: renneke@stolaf.edu

We’re on the Web http://www.stolaf.edu/depts/chemistry/