Inland Northwest ACS Section - Winter 99 Newsletter

National Chemistry Week

Once again, we will be hosting chemical demonstrations for National Chemistry Week. We will be in the new Children's Museum, which is downtown somewhere near Nordstrom's (if you don't know where that is, ask somebody's wife). It will be held on Saturday, November 13, from 10-4. We can always use a few volunteers for an hour or so during the day, mostly to keep grubby kiddly paws off the materials. More important, though, is that you and yours, especially Your grubby kiddlys, show up for this thing and let them see what it is you do to bring home the bacon every week.

If you want to volunteer for an hour's session, please contact Dave Cleary at either Gonzaga University chemistry department, or at cleary@gonzaga.edu.

Meetings

Earlier this month, we had a wonderful set of demonstrations from Dr. Marvin Lang,. The lecture and demos were very well attended, by both young and old, and many of the demos were interactive with the audience. All of the demos were simply done, but they were all very impressive. I personally had never seen the iodine clock reaction before, although I had heard about it. We appreciate you all for turning out for this.

In case you missed this one, here is our preliminary schedule for the speakers next year:

April 24, 2000
William Fateley, Kansas State University
"Hyperspacial Space Spectroscopy: from Surgery to Satellites"

September 18, 2000
George Bodner, Purdue University
"Ethics in Science, the Myth of the Objective Scientist"

October 18, 2000
Gary Comstock, Iowa State University
"Scientific Integrity in Research: Getting the Data Right"

November 6, 2000
Robert Bates, University of Florida
"The Chemistry and Alchemy of Brewing"

News from Scholarship Winners and Student Affiliates

We have a report from local scholarship winner Mica Hutchinsen that she is doing very well in school. In case you did not know it, for several years now we have been giving out $500 scholarships to eager future chemists graduating from high schools in this area. We did not do that this year, because we got kinda cheap and are reevaluating how it is best to blow the section funds. Ms Hutchinsen was the winner from last year, and so far as I know, is the first one to ever surface again after getting ahold of the check.

This year we decided to try something different. Earlier this year, we supported a group of students from the Gonzaga ACS Student Affiliate to go to one of the national ACS conventions. I think it was the one in San Diego. This fall we have sent a check to the EWU Student Affliates to help them with their dues. This group has been selected for a special recognition as an Honorable Mention chapter for its activities during the 1998-1999 academic year. I am not sure how many chapters were recognized but I think the number is less than 75. There are 900 chapters nationwide.

NORM 2002

I've heard that there are some local faculty that are interested in chairing NORM sessions. We need to have a bunch of volunteers for this event, not to mention people who want to get into this early and help plan the event. We are going to be NORM in the year 2002, which aint all that far off. We have already struck out when it comes to finding conference rooms at the local hotels. The event will be 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 now appears to be some sort of a conference center. A block of hotel rooms has been reserved at Cavanaugh's River Inn for all the out of towners that will be flocking in.

Elections

As usual, nobody wanted to kick the bums out and take over the management and the coffers of the section. So the same group of suspects will be running once again.

Tradition demands that we give you some idea of just who these guys are. The following are (really) their statements, not mine. Except for mine, of course:

Dr. Anthony (Tony) Mazzeo is a scientist at Hollister-Stier Laboratories, LLC located in Spokane. He has been a member of the ACS for nearly 20 years and an active member in the Inland Northwest local section since 1994. He has been a member of the executive committee since 1996 and has served as Secretary-Treasurer, Chair-elect, 1998 Chair, and Chair-elect again in 1999.

Dr. David Cleary told me to say that his resume reads the same as Tony's, except that he works at Gonzaga (as Department Chairman this year).

Mr Dennis DeMattia has never worked a day in his life as a chemist, but has been a computer weenie for the last thirty something years. He retired from Kaiser this year and joined the up and coming Valley company Byte Dynamics where after seven months he is only the fourth newest member of the staff. He does this section stuff because he felt that there ought to be some reason why he blew six years of his life studying this stuff.

The official ballot is conveniently a postage paid post card. Please mail it back. I know that it seems rather silly to vote for people who are the only ones on the ballot, rather like how they used to describe the elections in Communist Russia years ago, but the National people rate the sections on what kind of vote turnout it gets, so please at least send the cards back, even if you don't want to vote for anybody.

We welcome some writein votes. Even if you do not win an office this year, we can just about guarantee that you will win next year, since that makes you an automatic on-the-ballot candidate next year. The job really isn't so bad. Basically we meet a few weeks before one of our lecture meetings, have a nice dinner, shoot the local gossip, write some checks for worthy causes, and dump a lot of ideas onto the humble secretary to try to create a newsletter with. Of course, the lucky winners in the next few years will have a front row seat for NORM 2002 also.......