Cluster 4: Everyday Chemistry: From Perfumes to Pollution
This cluster utilizes a hands-on, laboratory-based approach to explore the relevance of chemistry in our everyday lives. Students will explore how basic chemical processes enhance many aspects of life, from medicines to blue jeans to fireworks, as well as investigate key concepts including the origin of life on earth. Then, you will put on your lab coat and head into the laboratory to study how organisms such as bacteria grow on environmental pollutants. Through investigative laboratory work, students will learn to think critically and scientifically about the everyday world around them.
Prerequisites: Students must have completed one year of high school chemistry and have demonstrated maturity in laboratory safety.
All students in this cluster will be enrolled in the following
courses.
Enhancing the Quality of Life: Colors, Flavors, Fragrances, & Pharmaceuticals
Instructors: Professors Bakthan Singaram (Chemistry and Biochemistry Department) and Stanley Williamson (Chemistry and Biochemistry Department)
This will be unlike any chemistry course you've ever had! Instead of using a textbook, we will use the literature and the laboratory to address the impact of chemistry on society. We will discuss basic chemical principles to discover how chemistry affects every aspect of our lives, including medicine, computers, food flavors, dyes, polluting compounds, and even how life began on the earth. We will perform experiments, not just watch demonstrations. At the end of four weeks you will have the opportunity to participate in a poster seminar not unlike those presented at scientific symposia around the world. You will take an intellectual, as well as physical, giant step toward your future as a scientist and innovator.
Environmental Toxicology
Instructor: Professor Chad Saltikov (Physical and Biological Sciences)
Scientists in environmental and health-related fields are concerned about adverse effects of chemical agents on living organisms as well as within their environments. However, there are certain types of bacteria that can tolerate toxic chemicals and in some cases grow on them. The biochemical reactions and end products can have dramatic impacts on the environment. How do scientists assess the presence of these bacteria in the environment? Moreover, what factors impact their growth on toxic chemicals? These are some questions that environmental scientists face and questions that students will try to answer. In this course, students will investigate how bacteria grow on metals such as arsenic and selenium. Students will participate in hands-on, lab-based experiments aimed isolating and identifying bacteria capable of growing on metals. The principles taught within this course will apply to a broad range of sciences.
Transferable Skills: Tools for Success
It may or may not surprise you that being a university researcher
requires a whole host of skills outside of the specific scientific
knowledge required of your chosen discipline or specialty. It requires
communication skills such as the ability to present your work in
writing and orally. It requires competencies in the realm of information
technology including the ability to find and judge (the validity
of) information and use a variety of hardware and software tools
(e.g. spreadsheets, databases, statistics software, other data manipulation
tools). It requires all of those skills required to effectively
conduct research such as data collection, analysis and interpretation,
critical thinking and problem solving as well as the ability to
conduct laboratory and/or field work. And, of course, a baseline
competency in English, science, mathematics and computers is critical.
The governing mission of the UCSC COSMOS Transferable Skills course
is to promote students’ future academic (and professional)
success through the exploration and development of transferable
skills: i.e. those competencies that students develop while in school
which facilitate academic achievement, the eventual transition into
the work-force and which are applicable in many other life situations.
Go to course information for:
- Logic and Probability: Reason and Riddles*
- Engineering
the Future: Autonomous Robots and Nanotechnology*
- Under
the Sea: Exploring Marine Organisms and Their World*
- Everyday
Chemistry: From Perfumes to Pollution*
- Video Games: The Design of Fun - From Concept to Code*
- Chemistry
and Mathematics: From Life to Thought*
- Astronomy, Number Theory, and Cryptography: From 1 to the Stars*
- Marine Mammals and Oceanography: From Prey to Predators
- Particle and Astrophysics: Investigations of the Minuscule to the Massive
