|
September 12, 2007: Volume 71, Number 2 |
The Chronicle
|
Jump to Story: |
And speaking of aerogels... Sol-Gel song a hit
Remember the "Sol-Gel Song" by Liz Lax ’05?
It’s become an international hit, at least in the community of scientists and engineers who devote themselves to the ultra-light materials known for their insulating properties.
Liz Lax '05 is pictured with guitar and a text about the science that inspires her music. |
It was performed by officers of the International Sol-Gel Society at their 14th conference last week in Montpellier, France, according to Mary Carroll of Chemistry, the College's director of undergraduate research, who attended with Ann Anderson of Mechanical Engineering. The two are co-directors of the College’s Aerogel Lab.
Carroll and Anderson presented four papers at the conference, with several current and former students as co-authors.
Lax, a first-year medical student at St. George’s University in Grenada, composed the piece in the summer of 2003 as a way to “pass the time in lab. “She performed it at the Steinmetz Symposium the following spring and posted the performance on the Web. It was there that officers of ISGS found the song and the lyrics. (What they performed was a mix of Lax’s song and Queen's “We Are the Champions” -- substituting “sol gels” for “champions.)
“During the conference banquet, Dr. Christophe Barbe, one of the officers of the International (ISGS, http://www.isgs.org/ ), called the rest of the ISGS officers to the microphone and announced that Liz Lax from Union College in New York had written a song about sol gels, and they were going to sing it,” Carroll said. “As you can imagine, we were delighted.
The Aerogel Team (summer 2003) members are, from left, Prof. Mary Carroll, Shira Mandel '05, Bobby Dunton '05, Elizabeth Lax '05, Jessica Grondin '05, Yadira Briones '04, Jan Konecny, an exchange student from Prague, and Prof. Ann Anderson. |
“Afterward, Ann and I let them know that Liz had been a research student in our lab,” Carroll said. “They hadn’t made the connection, which is probably a good thing, since they might have asked us to sing it!”
Some of the lyrics:
"Here in the bat cave, we play around with chemicals
Give me TMOS, methanol and ammonium hydroxide
Stir for ten minutes, don't forget the water
We're making sol-gels."
The song can be heard at http://scoter3.union.edu/~andersoa/AerogelWeb/.
|
<< Previous Story Aerogel team receives grant |
Next Story >> People in the news |