Chemistry faculty, students present experiments at Cedar Rapids STEM Festival

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Grad student giving "Cloud in a Bottle" demonstrationFaculty and graduate students from the University of Iowa Department of Chemistry, a unit of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, presented chemistry and climate experiments at the Cedar Rapids STEM Festival on February 24, 2015, at the Cedar Rapids Public Library.

The team's experiments demonstrated why the sky is blue and sunsets are red, how clouds form, and surface albedo.

The group of presenters included three faculty: Nicole Becker, Len MacGillivray, and Betsy Stone; post-doctoral scholar Rich Cochran; two graduate students, Josh Grandquist and Aruni Gankanda; and post-graduate student Josh Kettler.

The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers about 70 majors across the humanities; fine, performing and literary arts; natural and mathematical sciences; social and behavioral sciences; and communication disciplines. About 15,000 undergraduate and nearly 2,000 graduate students study each year in the college’s 37 departments, led by faculty at the forefront of teaching and research in their disciplines. The college teaches all Iowa undergraduates through the college's general education program, CLAS CORE. About 80 percent of all Iowa undergraduates begin their academic journey in CLAS. The college confers about 60 percent of the university's bachelor's degrees each academic year.