Author Archives: BoB

Up up and away

Posted on by

Do you know what a film canister is?  It’s a small plastic container that used to contain film.  Do you know what film is?  If you don’t, chances are you were born after 2003, which is about the time when digital photography overtook film photography.  It’s interesting that the container that was used to store film has actually outlived the film itself; you can buy packs of film canisters on Amazon for about $0.50 a piece.  They are useful for storage, art projects and film canister rockets.

Continue reading →
post

Orlando ACS

Posted on by

I presented some of my research at the American Chemical Society meeting in Orlando and thought it would be helpful to have a central repository for some of the items I discussed, so here it is.

  • A copy of the powerpoint slides.
  • A link to my Hardwarex paper, which describes the project I discussed.
  • If you missed the big link in the header of my website, I’ve got an entire page devoted to OMIS (which does need updating).
  • The github page which contains the code for programming the Arduino.
  • Want to get started with Arduino microcontrollers (with the intent to build OMIS)? Start with picking up the Arduino and a stepper motor from Adafruit. Then, follow their tutorial on how to use it.
  • The ACS didn’t allow attendees or speakers(!) to access the internet while at the conference (at least the registration fees didn’t go up … oh wait). Ahem, in any case, I wasn’t able to show this video, which demonstrates that two liquids in a 3D printed channel undergo laminar flow.

How can molecules move?

Posted on by

My Analytical Chemistry class just started the module on spectroscopy, and I wanted to have a visualization that displayed the different types of motion (rotational, translational and stretching) that molecules can experience. It turned out, I was able to make an interactive (sort of) graphic with a few lines of Mathematica code:

The three general classes of molecular motion.
Continue reading →
post

GlobalBreakfast Reflections

Posted on by

This week, we took part in the IUPAC Empowering Women in Chemistry Global Breakfast event. It happened during a time when I’m swamped in grading (which reproducibly happens from week 2 to week 15 of each semester). Nevertheless, I thought it would be worthwhile to record some thoughts about the event. Plus, I want to learn how to embed tweets in a blog post.

Continue reading →