The American Chemical Society, Green Mountain Local Section, celebrated National Chemistry Week with three special activities:

1)    On Saturday, October 15 ECHO at the Leahy Center for Lake Champlain  hosted two chemical demonstration shows (11 a.m. and 2 p.m.) by Willem Leenstra and the UVM Chem Cats (our student affiliate group). There was standing-room only as audiences enjoyed the antics of "Professor W". PHOTOS HERE

2)    On Saturday, October 22 we held a "hands-on chemistry" event at the Burlington Town Center from 10am until 12 noon.  In line with this year’s NCW theme of “The Joy of Toys” the properties of plastic were explored, “flubber” was made, and the properties of thermochromic toys were investigated. PHOTOS HERE

3)    During National Chemistry Week held a Chemical Prose contest.  Entrants were challenged to design a passage in English in which the entire prose derived from a stringing together of the symbols for the chemical elements. There were two categories: (1) Longest Passage, and (2) Most Creative. In each of these two categories, we awarded a $100 prize to the winner in each category, along with several "honorable mentions" You can see the 84 creative entries we received here.

Our NCW activities were reported in Seven Days, a local newspaper, and also in The View - the weekly magazine published by the University of Vermont. You can see The View report here.

The demonstrations were focused around the NCW 2005 theme: "The Joy of Toys"


Martin Case (Assistant Professor UVM Chemistry), Karen Murphy (Graduate Student, Chemistry)
and Sam Bernard (Chemistry Undergraduate) describe the chromatography butterfly experiment


Kay Gebhardt (Graduate Student, UVM Chemistry) supervises the creation of bouncy balls from polymer granules. The beekers of beads are used to demonstrate changes in rheology as the molecular weight increases (one beeker contains 1-mers, another 5-mers, and the third contains 15-mers)



Martin and Karen watch as "thinking putty" (from Crazy Aarons Putty World) changes color when dipped into hot or cold water - one of several experiments involving thermochromic toys (the ducks also change color)



Kay tests the mechanical properties of a rubber snake with Paul Vallett (UVM Undergraduate Chemist)


Playing with the flubber



Janet White assists with the polymerization of flubber


Dan Savin (Assistant Professor, UVM Chemistry) demonstrates how nylon is made.