AP Biology and Chemistry Students to Perform Experiments at the College

Nearly 50 AP chemistry and biology students from Academic Magnet High School will come to the College of Charleston for the day on Tuesday, May 22, 2012 to perform experiments that will build on the material they have learned throughout the year.

“Finishing a college-level course, the students have mastered the critical content, and by coming to the College of Charleston, we can involve them in more open-ended experiments,” says Neal Tonks, chemistry professor. “Even in a one-day overview, students can use their knowledge to interpret the data, assess whether their current understanding of the underlying theories agrees with the results they achieve, and formulate new experiments based on these techniques. By working at the College of Charleston, they can use state of the art spectral analysis equipment to see how their theoretical knowledge can be of use experimentally.”

The chemistry students will be in an organic chemistry lab in room 105 of the School of Sciences and Mathematics Building (corner of Calhoun and Coming Streets). They will be synthesizing biodiesel fuel from organic soybean oil and corn oil using a variety of experimental conditions, and then characterizing the materials using modern instrumental analysis techniques.

The biology students will be in the third floor Jennings biochemistry lab in the School of Sciences and Mathematics Building monitoring the formation of a colored antibody-enzyme complex by means of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to detect the presence of an antibody or an antigen in a sample that can be used to detect pathogens in the environment.

There is a critical need to increase student involvement in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields overall in this country, and the School of Sciences and Mathematics at the College is always interested in recruiting students who have an interest in the sciences, and convincing them it is an exciting, vibrant field of endeavor. Academic Magnet is one of the top schools in the nation, so the School is interested in increasing the number of science students who come to the College from there.

This is a pilot program. Over the next few years, the hope is to expand it to have students across the tri-county area experience science in a deeper way.

For more information, contact Neal Tonks at 843.953.7543.