News Archive Item
Hands-on Chemistry
Description:
The San Diego local section of the American Chemical Society organizes an annual Chem Expo event in historic Balboa Park to offer extra credit opportunities for middle- and high-school aged chemistry students. This year 750 extra credit forms were handed out in the Chem Expo, and booths overseen by girl scouts attracted 140 visitors on the front lawn outside the Expo. The extra credit forms required young chemistry students to view stage demonstrations, participate in hands-on booths, and summarize what they learned from each.
Three Scripps College students and one student from Pitzer College built a model of a protein (cycloxygenase or COX) and a second model of a small-molecule medicine first isolated from plants, aspirin, and visitors to our booth observed hands-on the attractive forces that drive drug-target interactions in the human body. The models were constructed from both renewable plant-based materials (wood, hemp, paper) and recycled inorganic materials (iron) obtained from a local collection center (Premises Metals, Montclair, CA). Magnets were employed to create attractive forces between the small-molecule and the target protein, used for illusustrating both specific and non-specific interactions. The role of chemists in drug design was emphasized by directing visitors to a nearby booth run by Pfizer. Hurrah chemical genomics and community outreach!
