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At the beginning of 1999, I was invited to a meeting of a new program called Circles. Apparently the
MIE program was going to expand the orientation sessions for entering science and
engineering students to include a math review. That was great because when I was an entering
college student all I got to do is walk around campus and meet the university
president. After a few other Circles meetings, I finally realized why I
was invited. I was asked to come up with an activity.
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With no defined parameters I thought
about what I could show an entering college students that would be exciting
(but safe), visually appealing (and hands-on), all encompassing (science or
engineering), and inexpensive (I wasn't told the budget.). After thinking about what was
colorful in my organic chemistry lectures, I thought about optical rotation (the
animation on the top of each page) and
the fact that when I was a first year college students I had read, in the part of
the physics book that we did not get to, that optical polarizers were just
stretched plastic. Thus without any further research I propose to make optical polarizers
with the entering students.
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As the months passed I found my old college
physics book at a used book store for a dollar and realized that there were no
good references for making optical polarizers. That's when I
started looking through patents for hints of how polarizers could be made.
For the most part I found stretched polyvinyl alcohol, iodine and some boron.
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At the same time when I was looking for recipes
for making slime for my daughter's third grade "Career Day", I discovered that gel glue
is polyvinyl alcohol. If I could use kid's gel glue and other store
bought stuff instead
of chemicals purchased directly from a chemical company, perhaps the working
with "chemicals" stigma could be reduced.
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Unfortunately before I found all this out I
had less than a month and one more meeting with the Circles committee to work
everything out. This is when my students started looking at me funny as I
would go into the lab almost every day looking for a way to prepare polyvinyl
alcohol sheets and how to stretch them. Eventually my students and I found
the cheapest and easiest way to stretch polyvinyl
alcohol in the lab.
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Thanks to all the students that have experimented along with me in developing these activities for
pre-K to college students to enjoy.
