Prof.
Shillady's "Chemistry in the News" Page
Welcome to Prof. Shillady's Chemistry
in the News webpage. The purpose of this page is to bring published science
to high school students and teachers in an easy-to-understand format. Prof.
Shillady has read and summarized these papers, hoping to offer assistance
to students who are doing research papers. This page was inspired
by participation in the NSF-sponsored "Virginia Urban Corridor Teacher
Preparation Collaborative" (Profs. William Haver and Reuben Farley,
Principle Investigators). The Collaborative links Germanna Community
College, Mary Washington College, Norfolk State University, Longwood
College, J. Sargeant
Reynolds Community College, the Mathematics
and Science Center, and Tidewater Community College with Virginia Commonwealth
University as the lead institution. The main web page for the Collaborative
is maintained at Longwood College; this page is a result of new course
development in CHEMISTRY. A new text "CHEMISTRY IN THE NEWS"
has been written based on a very
succinct outline-style Freshman chemistry text by George and Richard Sasin
at Drexel University and augmented by over 40 recent articles, mostly from
"Chemical & Engineering News". This text will be updated
each year by inserting new and deleting old articles. The first pilot
offering of this new course occurred during the recent 1997 Summer Conference
of the "Urban Corridor Collaborative" June 16-July 16.
An updated version of the text will be ready by January 1998 and occasionally
brief portions of the text will appear here on fundamental topics such
as how to name compounds, how to balance reactions and new demonstration
experiments. However, the main function of this page will be to provide
interpretation of recent science-news in broad terms for the general public.
The main concept of the new text
comes from an article in "DISCOVER" magazine in the August 1995
issue, "Easter's End" by Jared Diamond. This article reports
that recent core excavations on Easter
Island reveal that about 20,000 years ago Easter Island was a tropical
paradise with plenty of large trees. When Easter Island was colonized
by Polynesian-speaking people they were able to build fishing vessels as
shown by evidence of many dolphin bones found in trash pits, However,
over the course of time, trees were used as rollers to aid in moving many
large statues to the point that when Easter
Island was first discovered by the Dutch Explorer Jacob Roggeveen on
April 5, 1722 (Easter) it was a barren grassland with only small shrubs
and few animals such as insects and chickens. This sad situation
led to cannibalism among the inhabitants who were now trapped on the island
with no materials to build ships. Such a sad tale seems long ago
and far away, but today there is a similar situation in Haiti
where almost all the trees have been used to make charcoal and the barren
land has led to mud slides which have chased fish away from the shore.
Probably Haiti
can be restored by international aid, but the present situation shows
that humans live "day-to-day" and usually do not plan for tomorrow
even when it is possible. These are the type of stories we need to
consider through the eyes of modern scientific understanding.
-Off to Mars!
Another "hot" news topic
is the recent successful landing of a robotic
explorer on the surface of Mars. Some people ask why this exploration
is necessary, although this mission is far less expensive than a mission
with human explorers. One factor is that there are some estimates
that by the year 2025 the population of the Planet Earth will increase
by 3 BILLION (!) people if current trends continue. There are signs
that the number of children per family is leveling off in many parts of
the world (China enforces a policy of only ONE child per family!), but
there is still a rapid population growth is some parts of the world.
Although Mars pictures look nice with a pink sky, the temperatures are
VERY low and the atmosphere is VERY "thin" with only a low oxygen
content. In spite of these limitations, there is the driving force
of increased population on Earth. Some scientists are already talking about
using the release of gases which cause global warming on Earth to warm
up Mars. If water can be found and melted, perhaps plants can be grown
on Mars that would increase the oxygen content of the Martian atmosphere.
However, this might take hundreds of years. Such ideas must be considered
in light of the fact that 25 years is a generation and long range plans
must carry over political elections, "small" wars, industrial
paradigm shifts and day-to-day mortgage payments. However, only a
population which is educated in such concepts will have any chance at understanding
and supporting long range environmental planning.
Recent studies in this laboratory have been concerned with how molecules dissolve
in water. One biologically important molecule is the hormone MELOTONIN which
is suspected to be the natural sleep agent secreted by the pineal gland when light levels
are reduced as perceived by the optic nerve connected to the pineal gland.
Using a form of specroscopy called Magnetic Circular Dichroism and computer modeling
of many possible molecular conformations the best fit to the experimental data is
a structure which forms a water-bridge structure and holds the molecule in a
certain conformation. This conformation not only fits the experimental MCD
spectrum, it is also calculated to be a very low energy structure. Thus it
is a good candidated for a major structure of melatonin dissolved in water.
See the "Chemistry in the News" journal.
Sample
experiments from Prof. Shillady's new textbook.
See
Prof. Shillady's handpicked links to pages chemistry-related and otherwise.
There have been
inquiries to this page since July 29, 1997.
Do you have any questions, suggestions, or comments? If so, then e-mail Prof. Shillady at:
Acknowledgements: Andy's
Art Attack for artwork, the Animated
GIFs Collection also for artwork,
and Yahoo!, and page constructed
by Fitz Elliott, Mills E. Godwin HS.
This page does not reflect an official position of Virginia Commonwealth University.
