Admissions

Lake Forest, Ill. – Lake Forest College students Emily Pospiech '09, Danielle Clark '09, and Ali Vetter '10 presented a poster at the 237th American Chemical Society meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, and received a certificate for winning the Chemvention national competition. Their award for the competition was a $2,500 travel prize, which paid for their expenses to attend the event, where they also received a certificate in recognition of their work.

Chosen for its creativity, low cost, and embodiment of the ACS 2009 theme, “Chemistry–It’s elemental,” the student-designed, hands-on experiment outlined a plan to introduce color chromatography to an elementary school class with a budget of $20.

“For Emily, Danielle, and Ali, the ACS meeting was an eye-opening experience,” says Associate Professor of Chemistry Jason Cody, who also attended the meeting. “Not only did they get to explore Salt Lake City along with 10,700 other chemists, but they also heard many presentations of cutting-edge research from top researchers and learned several new chemistry demonstrations from the other undergraduate chemistry students at the meeting.”

Additional design help for the submission came from Bryan Santos '09, Maria Zawadowicz '12, and Xiaoyu Zhu '12.

“The project separated spots drawn by water-based (overhead or whiteboard) markers into their constituent colors,” explains Cody. “Black markers have in them blue, green, purple, and yellow inks. This is similar to what happens to leaves in the fall: the green chlorophyl dye falls apart for winter, revealing yellow or orange dyes that were always there but covered by the stronger color of the green. Color chromatography allows us to see all of the colors present, not just the most intense one that masks all others.”

The submission was put together by the College’s chemistry club, Student Affiliates of the American Chemical Society (SAACS), under the guidance of faculty advisor Senior Lecturer in Chemistry Elizabeth Fischer.

The students were able to use what they learned immediately, as a group of students from Carmen Elementary School in Waukegan (Ill.) visited campus on March 27 for chemical demonstrations and hands-on activities, and another will visit on April 17. These visits were made possible through one of six nationally-awarded grants from the ACS for chemistry outreach efforts (Community Interaction by Student Affiliates grant) for the Measure of Our Success (MOOS) program. SAACS has been hosting the annual spring campus visit for over 12 years.

Lake Forest College is a national liberal arts institution located 30 miles north of downtown Chicago. The College has 1,400 students representing 45 states and 69 countries.

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Will Pittinos ‘06
847-735-6177
pittinos@lakeforest.edu