Alumni Society Board Provides Gift to Chemistry Department
Last fall, the Alumni Society Board voted to give a portion of their endowment funds to the chemistry department for equipment upgrades. The department used the funds to repair an inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer (ICP-OES) that had been damaged from a water leak. The instrument is primarily used in CHEM 423W: Chemical Spectroscopy, an advanced, writing-intensive laboratory course, as well as for independent student research projects. The ICP-OES is used to detect and quantify metals (e.g., Pb2+, Cu2+, etc.) in materials. It will be used by students to characterize the adsorption of metals onto the surfaces of microplastic particles in rivers and oceans.