Author Archives: BoB

Periodic Tables at BCCE 2018

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I’ve just gotten back from another wonderful BCCE conference (that’s Biennial Conference on Chemical Education) which was held at Notre Dame.  It was a great opportunity to catch up with some friends and colleagues that I’ve missed since leaving CSU last year to join the College at Brockport.

I presented some of the work I’ve been doing on 3D printed periodic tables and will blog about their construction and use in the near future.  There were some folks in the audience who wanted to get started right away with the objects, so I’ve posted them here on my website.  You can download a zip file that contains 19 tables (about 3 MB).

The zip file contains the following periodic trends:

  • atomic radii
  • ionization energies
  • electron affinities
  • electronegativities
  • human abundance
  • exceptions to the aufbau principle
  • absolute (Pearson) hardness

For the first four, there are four different sizes

  • 132×76 $mm^2$ table with title, f-block elements and symbols on each of the blocks.  These objects take about 3 hours to print.
  • 150×21 $mm^2$ table with no title, no f-block elements and symbols on each of the blocks.  These objects take about 2.5 hours to print.
  • 108×36 $mm^2$ table with no title, no f-block elements and symbols on each of the blocks.  These objects take about 2 hours to print.
  • 60×24 $mm^2$ table with no title, no f-block elements and no symbols on the blocks.  These objects take about 45 minutes to print.

As I build a collection of posts and materials for 3D-printed periodic tables, I will collect them here, so if you have interest in this project, bookmark that page.

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What’s growing

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Now that my students are wrapping up their summer research activities, it’s time to share some of my new designs.  This one is inspired by my students – they wanted to design and 3D print keychains – and Rozenn’s request to have name tags for our plants.

Rosemary, thyme and sage, with a bit of patriotism to boot.

Read on to see how I designed these, which involved a little bit of magic for the swash ornament.

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Ants Be Gone!

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Our hummingbird feeder was inundated with ants. While there are plenty of commercial options available for solving this problem, I wanted to try my hand at designing my own solution. In thinking about how a water trap should be designed, I came up with the following critical elements.

  1. A leak-free cup for the water (duh)
  2. An upper attachment point that prevents tipping of the cup
  3. A lower attachment point that is integrated into the monolithic design.

Here’s the result.

I’m not fast enough with the camera to take a picture of a hummingbird.

 

Continue reading →

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Students present at undergrad symposium

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On April 28th, 2018, my first two undergraduate students at Brockport gave their first poster presentation at a professional meeting.

Shauna and Megan – ready to answer the tough questions.

The meeting was held at The College at Brockport this year.  There were 50 or so posters and about 100 attendees.  We also had a few oral presentations and the keynote speaker was Brockport alum Dr. Michael Nicholson of Precision BioSciences.

Megan and Shauna presented their first semester’s work on developing sensors and methods for OMIS: the Open Millifluidic Inquiry System.  Shauna is developing a method to perform alkalinity measurements in small volumes under dynamic flow conditions and Megan is working on a pH sensor based on anodically electrolyzed iridium oxide films.  They’ve made some great progress not only building confidence in their laboratory skills but also learning how to present their research (in addition to actually doing the work).  I’d consider that a good set of outcomes for their first semester in independent study (as Freshmen, no less).  Expect big things from these ladies.

P.S. Happy Star Wars Day.