Princeton ACS Meeting Announcement

Monthly Meeting & Year End Celebration
 

Our speaker, Kathryn Wagner, PhD,
Princeton University Department of Chemistry
&
2009 Chair of the Princeton ACS Section

Abstract

Chemical demonstrations are often used to entertain. Their associated pops, bangs and color changes draw audience attention and “aahs”. Demonstrations may also be used to educate. Chemistry is a physical science, and audience members with widely varying levels of scientific sophistication have responded to the physical experience of a demonstration with “Aha!” Kathryn Wagner will present a program of demonstrations and show how each has been used to educate as well as entertain.
 

Biography

Kathryn “Kitty” Wagner earned her B.S. in Chemistry at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, her Ph.D. in Inorganic and General Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and her certification as a K-12 science teacher at Cook College, Rutgers University. She worked as a research chemist in DuPont’s Textile Fibers Department in Wilmington, Delaware for four years before moving to New Jersey with her family. Her experiences, both as a teaching assistant for Prof. Bassam Shakhashiri at the University of Wisconsin and as a volunteer in her children’s elementary school classes, gave her a deep respect for the educational value of demonstrations and hands-on activities. Dr. Wagner has been the lecture demonstrator in chemistry at Princeton University since 1991 and director of the Princeton Chemistry Outreach Program since she helped to organize it in 1996. She has organized National Chemistry Week Activities Nights for the ACS Princeton Section every year since 2000. She also teaches “The Chemistry of Magic,” a demonstration- and laboratory-centered course she developed in 2006 for freshman nonscience majors at Princeton University.
 

Reservations: The meeting will be held in Kresge Auditorium (room 120), Frick Laboratory, Princeton University. The seminar is at 6 PM followed immediately by dinner at at The Ferry House, 32 Witherspoon St, Princeton, NJ. Frick Laboratory is located on the corner of Nassau Street and Washington Road. The seminar is free and open to the public. Reservations are required for dinner, which is $25 for members and $15 for students. All reservations will be billed, for the section pays on the number of reservations, not the number of attendees.  Please contact Denise D’Auria at denised@princeton.edu or (609) 258-5202 or by Wednesday, December 9 to make or cancel reservations.