Tag: Chemistry

Clement, Raether, and the Hartford Skyline

adohertyhLeave a comment

The warm sodium glow of Trinity College’s campus by night—Clement Chemistry Building and Raether Library in the foreground, the chapel and the Hartford skyline in the background—highlights (in a literal, X-marks-the-spot manner) the contrast between being a student and a faculty member here. Though the same institution, the same general campus, I spend my time now in completely different places than I once did. A prime example is the X-marked courtyard between the two buildings—a place I walked through perhaps 10 times total as a student, but where I now pause for coffee with my colleagues nearly every morning.

Clement, Raether, and the Hartford Skyline

Cork Drawer

adohertyhLeave a comment

I was searching for a cork to fit an opening in a piece of old-school chemical glassware. In the farthest-away, most-remote corner of an old chemistry lab was simply a drawer labeled “corks”; inside, I found an expansive sea of every possible cork diameter. Nothing more, nothing less than every cork—I felt like I had cast some sort of obscure seeking spell that brought me a “be careful what you wish for” volume of results.

Cork Drawer

A Spring Morning at Trinity College

adohertyhLeave a comment

Perfect, breezy, warm, and effulgent spring days have sprawled across Trinity’s campus, rather like students on the quad. Grading papers in my office can at least be softened by an open window and the resulting smell of flowers.

A Spring Morning at Trinity College

Johnson Hall on the Compass

adohertyh1 Comment

Following principles of green design, St. Lawrence University’s Johnson Hall of Science was built facing north-south, such that light throughout the day could be used to light rooms on both sides. The inner courtyard even features a light stone facade to help bounce more light into the inner offices. (I can attest that this works.) When the rest of the campus was constructed along the local street grid, rather than the compass points, the result is that JHS looks like a bit of a rebel among its neighbors.

Johnson Hall on the Compass

Schlenk Line in Development

adohertyh1 Comment

This is my Schlenk line; there are many like it, but this one is mine. The double-manifold design allows my students and me to expose samples to either vacuum or inert gas (argon, in this case.) Every line has little tweaks and customizations made by the scientist using it, and is thus inevitably a work-in-progress. This particular line very much needs a full-time vacuum gauge as its next addition.

Schlenk Line in Development

3D Printing Materials

adohertyhLeave a comment

In addition to photography, I’ve been exploring 3D printing in the past few years. I’ve found that it’s a great route to making small objects to support my science work. In this case, I was developing a holder to support a 12.7 mm pressed solid sample pellet inside the space normally occupied by a 10-cm pathlength liquid-handling cuvette. The result is this odd rectangular shape that unlocks to hold the “too wide” pellet diagonally—thanks, square root of two!

In these forms, I was working with a variety of materials, including glass-reinforced nylon, lost-wax-cast brass, and a bronze/steel powder combination.

3D Printing Materials

Clement Academy of Chemistry

adohertyhLeave a comment

Trinity College’s Chemistry Department, site of the invention of cyanoacrylate adhesives, still resides in the neo-gothic Clement Hall. During our time there in the early 2000s, the Harry-Potter-esque design combined with the “magical” reactions we ran made it easy to view the building as precisely the place real-world wizards would work.

Clement Academy of Chemistry

Chemistry from the Library

adohertyhLeave a comment

One of Trinity College’s oldest buildings (Clement Hall, home to the Chemistry Department where I got my bachelor’s) is across from one of its newest (Raether Library and IT Center). From inside the modern surfaces and behind the modern windows, Clement looks even more Hogwartsian than it does typically.

Chemistry from the Library

Spectroscopy Lab

adohertyhLeave a comment

Approaching the summer solstice, the start of fall-semester classes and their attendant labs seems far away, but a new class of St. Lawrence first-year students will be here before I know it.

Spectroscopy Lab I

This was one of the light sources students were interrogating: a sodium lamp, like the ones used in street lights (at least in the twentieth century—LED street lamps are becoming increasingly dominant now.)

Spectroscopy Lab II