The following reports were written by members of Environmental Science during the third day of the program. Some elements may have been removed/edited for various reasons, but the text that remains is in the student's own words.
Today I learned how to build little molecular models on the PC, then we started to work on our projects. I worked in a pair with Le'Roy, the job was hard but slowly we are goin' on.
Emanuele
Today was the first time I worked with MacSaprtan Pro TM, so that was good for me. But other than that, the VOC lab was pretty much stuff I'd done before, so mostly I just helped people with their structures, checking them for the right formulas and knowing how to use the program. Now we've started on projects, and Hugh and I are trying to use Spartan TM to study the decomposition of pollutants into radicals. The problem is, the calculations take a long time, so we only have one shot to get it right without crashing overnight! Hope it works...
Renee
I taught this morning's lesson today, we did a lab involving calculating the electrostatic potentials of different volatile organic compounds and comparing that to their reactivity in terms of eye irritation. The activity went well, everyone got good data. Now we are working on our final projects. Renee and I are trying to find the transition states for a bunch of different peroxides that contribute to smog. We have to run our calculations overnight, so hopefully we will have lots of good data in the morning.
Hugh
I really enjoyed today, more then I enjoyed yesterday because we used a lot of MacSpartan TM and we started working on our projects. My group's project is really interesting.
Wledeh
I enjoyed today's class much more than I did any other day. I especially liked it because in the beginning of class we worked with MacSpartan TM, and after lunch we started working on our projects in our groups.
Ebonee
Today was fun, because we didn't use Stella TM and we used a new program that made pretty pictures. That was really fun!. The project that I am doing is not cool but, I am having fun doing it.
Harold