Playing With Pyridines
During the past summer and current academic year, I’ve been working in Professor Dharni Vasudevan’s environmental chemistry lab at Bowdoin College. For those in the Chemistry Department, this means that I’m part of “Team Dirt”: My senior research project is all about soil. Sometimes, when I’m explaining my research to non-scientists, saying “My research is about soil” is as far as I get. Sometimes this is all my audience really cares to hear, and a more in-depth description would be wasted. In more receptive company, I find myself grappling with the level of chemistry background of my audience as I try to explain what about soil I am actually researching—an interesting dilemma to find myself in considering that barely a year ago I was still struggling to understand my own project as I applied for summer fellowship to do research with Prof. Vasudevan. [Read more…] about Playing With Pyridines