Chem Labs Go Greener
As Darren Hamilton, associate professor of chemistry, enthusiastically relates, the department is in a multidimensional process of enhancing its teaching labs with the more efficient use of nontoxic and recyclable materials; focusing on more efficient technologies like microwaves instead of hotplates to carry out basic experiments; and having students make better use of chromatography and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, state-of-the-art instruments that are currently underused.
“Using a glass flask, solvent, and a hotplate for recrystallization tends to leave our students with the idea that everyone does it like this,” says Hamilton, a British-born and educated organic chemist who has led the charge to reevaluate the teaching labs. While it’s still important that students know how tried-and-true procedures work, he says, “we want to look like the outside world.”
Part of the department’s efforts relate to an academia-wide movement to “green” chemistry, which involves using less-toxic solvents and thinking critically about the scale of experiments and how much waste they produce. A clean working environment is not only safer but mimics the functioning of pharmaceutical companies such as Merck, Pfizer, and GlaxoSmithKline—places MHC chemistry students routinely intern and work. —M.H.B.
