Inland Northwest ACS Section - Spring 2000 Newsletter

I am assuming you can find Gonzaga, at least. Hughes Hall can be found by first finding the big campus chapel (it don't matter how big the church is, if it is on a campus, it is a chapel) and then walk along its West side, keep on heading South (more or less following the sidewalks) and you will run into the Chemistry building. The lecture room is the first room on your left, on the East side.

Our next speaker will be Dr. William G. Fateley, a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas.

Title M. C. Escher Art: Its Beauty and Insight

Abstract The lithographic works of the artist M. C. Escher have a way of teasing the imagination. He perceived the rules of nature in his art and reflected this image in his work.

Professor Fateley has a number of talks that he can give, but I have been fascinated by Escher drawings for many years. These are the sorts of things that have birds blending (we computer geeks today say Morphing) into dogs and cats, or buildings with staircases that travel on infinitely. I don't know what a Chemist knows about these things, but it has got to be a good talk if all he does is bring a bunch of pictures. If you think that we should have had a more scientific subject, blame Dr Cleary.

NORM 2002

You might as well get used to the fact that I am gonna bore you to death for the next two years on this Norm topic. We are the host for this mini ACS convention and We Need Bodies!! It will be held here Thursday and Friday, June 20-21, 2002 at the Schoenberg Center on the campus of Gonzaga Univ. This is the funny teepee looking building sort of in back of a bowling alley to the West of the Gonzaga campus that used to be a museum, and then was some sort of a conference center, and soon will be converted to classrooms.

This is not a huge building, but that is OK, since we are actually anticipating a small crowd. We would be happy to get 200 people - Portland got 800, but most of those lived in the Portland area. I am expecting that the bulk of the people attending this thing will be from out of the area, since we only got 80 members living In the area. We also have use of the Gonzaga Art Museum next door - who knew that they even Had an art museum? - which has a great area for cocktail parties, and also has a rather nice lecture room. Several of us toured the Schoenberg Center last month. It has about 10 rooms, of various sizes, that can hold between 25 and 75 people. The rooms are all laid out funny, being semicircular to fit the contours of the Teepee building.

We signed a contract with Cavanaughs hotel just to the West of the Center. We are on for Wed., June 19, 2002 (25 rooms), Thurs., June 20, 2002 (45 rooms), Friday, June 21, 2002 (25 rooms), and Sat., June 22, 2002 (5 rooms). The rate is $72.00 - single/double/triple/quad occupancy. We got these numbers from ACS National.

We also have a contract with Cavanaughs for their banquet room for Thursday evening. Now all we got to do is find a speaker who works cheap and draws a huge audience.

We are still looking for volunteers to help out with the actual convention. We need people for hosting some sessions, being gofers, providing comedic relief, and screwing light bulbs into the projectors. (Old joke: How many computer programmers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer - They can't do it, that is a hardware problem.) This is mostly a brawn, not brains requirement.

I will be going to a meeting at the End of April where ACS trains us on how to run one of these meetings. If it is anything like their Officer training, they will mostly tell us to Delegate everything, and we will spend most of our time rolling on the floor. And, as you can see from the blurb at the end of this epistle, the 2000 Norm will be held in Idaho Falls, and one of us will probably go to that conference to see how they did it. I had the opportunity to go to the Portland one last year, but only for one day. The guy that ran it mostly worried that he was not going to get enough registrants to cover their expenses. I worry that we will get too many to handle with our facilities.

In Memoriam: Grace Ford

Grace Riddell Ford, a member of ACS for many years, died January 4, 2000. Grace graduated with honors from Texas Woman's University in 1943 with a degree in chemistry. She started her career at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington where she discovered electroless nickel, a process for plating metals by chemical reduction rather than electrolysis. This process revolutionized the metals plating industry, making possible the plating of odd shaped items such as ball point pens and hard surfaces like gun bores and the interiors of rockets. Her name appears on several Bureau patents. In 1948, she married Jerry Ford, a minister. Jerry and Grace lived several places before moving to Spokane in 1967. After her children had grown, she began a teaching career at Garry Middle School and later she taught chemistry at Central Valley High School.

She is survived by her husband, one daughter, one son, and four grandchildren.

Elections

After a hard fought, bloody, dirty, and expensive election campaign, (Whoops! Wrong election, that was the primaries) the same crew was put back into office, with just a little rearranging of the deck chairs. Tony Mazzeo is now ChairPerSibling, and David Cleary is now whatever it was that Tony was last year. Apparently there were several suggestions written in the ballots to kick out the newsletter guy, but nobody else signed up for the job, so he is still there too.

It does look like we might get some fresh meat next year, as Jeff Moore is considering running for one of the jobs. Hopefully the newsletter job.

Postscript -- Just as this newsletter was going to press (actually, Kinkos) it was announced that Tony Mazzeo has resigned from Hollister Stiers and accepted a job from DuPont. Since DuPont does not have any jobs anywhere near Spokane, he has decided to move to Wilmington, Delaware where they do have some lab space available. He has been fiddling with plants and herbs to prevent allergies for the last 10 years of his career, so one hopes that he does not get mixed up the first few days on the new job and grab a bottle of gunpowder if he gets a case of the sneezies.

Press Release:

ACS National always sends the newsletter guy a bunch of junk, which mostly ends up as recycling material. However, this little item seemed to be of some interest to us:

Glenn Crosby, a Chemistry Professor with WSU in Pullman, has been re-elected to the Board of Directors of ACS. This is Crosby's third term on the board. He will use his new term to enhance the influence of the Society in improving undergraduate and graduate science programs in the nation's colleges and universities.

Anybody think we can persuade this guy to help us with NORM 2002???

NORM 2000 - Idaho Falls

As the blurb in the back indicates, the NORM 2000 meeting will be June 15-17 in Idaho Falls. Everybody is invited to come on down. I checked a map and it does not seem like a real bad drive, if you are really into driving. This would be especially interesting for all you people who are thinking of helping out with our NORM 2002 convention. Next year's party is in Seattle.

ACS Members Promote Science in Local Elementary Schools

The Inland Northwest Section is committed to promoting science education as has been demonstrated in the past with scholarships and National Chemistry Week activities at the Spokane Children's Museum and other venues. This year members have been helping at local Science Fairs and Science & Technology events at local elementary schools. Dave Cleary and Tony Mazzeo performed chemistry demonstrations at Sunrise Elementary School on February 1st. There were about 50 presenters from local industries, organizations, and colleges including a group from Eastern Washington University Chemistry Department led by Prof. Jeff Rahn.

On March 7th, Tony Mazzeo led the judges committee for the Ponderosa Elementary School Science Fair. Dave Cleary led the judging committee for Lake Spokane Elementary School on February 9, 2000. Joanne Smieja hosted a hands-on science demonstration evening at Moran Prairie Elementary School on February 10, 2000. Several Gonzaga University student accompanied and assisted her. Several schools have contacted our local section and requested science fair judges, but these requests have been denied due to a paucity of judges.

If you would like to participate, please contact the officers. (Finch Elementary School would like judges on May 12, 2000.)

Fall Meeting

The next meeting after this one will not be till this fall, on my birthday:September 18, 2000

George Bodner, Purdue University

"Ethics in Science, the Myth of the Objective Scientist"

All of us Zags fans be sure to turn out to welcome this Boilermaker.