SMILE Notes for 20 January 1998 [Plenary Session]

Prepared by Alex Junievicz

Pat Riley Lincoln Park High School

She brought boards with 1, 2, 3, and many nails sticking out of them. She asked for volunteers to sit on the nails, but nobody would do it. She demonstrated the concept of contact surface area by dropping apples on the nails and measuring the depth to which the nails penetrated the apples.

Therese Donatello Weber High School

She brought a box of shells (sea type, containing fossils) and gave them to group members who wanted them.

Larry Alofs Kenwood Academy [High School]

He promised when he taught the chemistry after splitting H₂O into component hydrogen and oxygen molecules, that he would show how they came back together. He used a battery charger to split H₂0 by electricity. Now he had two test tubes, one with (since energy was added we suspect that there might also be some O₃ ozone) with half the volume of H₂. He used an electrode with insulation located in the separation liquid which had 1/2 mole of NaOH. He took a plastic pop bottle top and a tray of water, He placed the gases in the pop bottle top (under H₂O); the top had a rubber stopper that had 2 wires in a V configuration pushed through the stopper. He clipped one to the gas pipe, and the other to a spark generator, and showed how the mixture exploded. CAUTION: in his trials at school the wires were blown out of the rubber stoppers. He used a small test tube that was approximately 3/4 full of H₂.

Chuck Buzek Spry School

He had people to line up in the front of the room based on the biological time scale. Between the P,M,C periods took up most of the room, and the current period of may{?} wasn't worth more than an inch. Then he broke up these into sub periods.

Carol Zimmerman Lane Tech High School

She brought in a cartoon of FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE . A guy is standing on an overpass 30 meters high. He has to drop a package into the truck as it goes under the overpass. The truck is 100 meters away. If it starts from a velocity of 0 and accelerates at a rate of 4.9 meters per second-squared. How many seconds should he wait, after the truck starts, to drop the package?

She showed the math involved and the truck took 6.4 seconds to get to the bridge, and the rock took 2.5 seconds to fall, thus the guy should wait for about 3.9 seconds before dropping the package, and breaking the truck window [or worse].

Ken Schug Professor of Chemistry at IIT

He brought some Goldenrod paper, and sprayed it with NH₄OH and it turned red. By using an inhibitor to prevent the base from becoming wet, or applying a weak and user-friendly acid [vinegar] to prevent its

becoming a base, he got the SMILE face to appear.

Curcumin - Turmeric [an ingredient in curry powder] is the dye used, and he showed its molecular structure and pointed out that one hydrogen atom in the middle detaching from the molecule is the reason for the color change. Baking soda does work but n ot as well as ammonia, and it does not evaporate to reverse the change.