The Living Laboratory

Molecules That Matter

In CHEM 110, time spent on Seneca Lake helps prove that chemistry is relevant.

While geoscience offers the most intensive curricular interaction with Seneca Lake, the chemistry department’s introductory survey course, titled "Molecules That Matter," uses Seneca Lake to make the sorts of lab-to-life connections that can be appreciated by . . . well . . . anyone who eats, drinks, or breathes.

"Chemistry unfolds through the examination of problems facing society," is how Professor David Craig, who teaches the class, explains it.

For each topic covered in the course, real-life applications are examined, always in the reading, but sometimes also on-site.

"One of the purposes of this course," says Craig, "is to reveal what chemistry really is to people who don’t know what it is." It’s the sort of popularization of the topic that, at other institutions, is reserved for non-major courses. At HWS, Craig says, contextualization of science is de rigueur for all. Future majors take 110 alongside everyone else. "It’s not a dead-end course anymore."

For the study of energy policy, students visit the lakeside, coal-powered power plant in Dresden, N.Y., where engineers are debriefed on their efforts to reduce harmful emissions.

The unit on the environment includes two three-hour outings aboard the HWS William F. Scandling (formerly known as the HWS Explorer). On one trip, students themselves perform alkalinity testing, and then speculate on the sources of Seneca’s high alkalinity and likely implications. Dissolved-oxygen concentrations are another focus. In this way, the lake, Craig says, "is just one laboratory we use to try to connect our science to the world." — D.C.

The Seneca Lake series was researched and written by Dana Cooke and Peter Rolph '85 — writer/editors in the Office of College Relations. Portions of the series also appear in the Fall '97 issue of The Pulteney St. Survey. To request a copy, e-mail Susan Murad at murad@hws.edu.