Professors, students engage young people in chemistry

For the seventh consecutive year, Professor Christy Haynes and Department of Chemistry students organized and conducted Chemistry Day at the West 7th Community Center in Saint Paul, July 24, 2012. Professors Aaron Massari and William Pomerantz and their students also helped with this year's event.

This outreach included an afternoon of activities for young people participating in the community center's summer day camp. About 70 young people participated. It was an afternoon filled with a variety of chemistry demonstrations and hands-on experiments, ranging from the creation of polymers and art work to the impacts of dry ice on different materials. Older youth had to use chemistry experiments to solve some mysteries. The afternoon culminated with the popular liquid nitrogen ice cream treat.

The West 7th Community Center serves Saint Paul's diverse West 7th neighborhood, providing educational and recreational opportunities to residents.

Chemistry Day is one of the Department of Chemistry's outreach activities aimed at showing young people, particularly those from diverse or underprivileged populations, that chemistry is fun and something that they, too, can do.

More photos are available on the Department of Chemistry Facebook page.