1st Annual Natural Sciences Poster Session: Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Posters are one of the ways that scientists use to communicate their research to colleagues. Others are publications in scientific journals and oral presentations at conferences

Fifty posters have been submitted by the College of Natural Sciences faculty, undergraduate, and graduate students. The abstracts of the posters will be compiled in a booklet for those who attend the session.

The poster session is open to the general public from 9 am until noon; it is open to the college and the university community from noon until 3 pm; and there is a reception and awards ceremony at 3 pm. Everyone is invited to the reception.

The following is an abstract from David Ball, Chemistry, of the kind of scientific experiment that is made clearer by its presentation in poster form.

Diastereoselectivity in the Reduction of a -Hydroxyketones, An Experiment for the Chemistry Major Organic Laboratory

David B. Ball

Department of Chemistry, California State University, Chico

"The Chemistry department at CSU, Chico has implemented an integrated laboratory sequence that has replaced the advanced laboratories of inorganic, organic, and physical chemistry.   In order to adequately prepare our chemistry majors for the inquiry-based, research-like experiments in the integrated laboratories we have introduced into the second semester chemistry major organic laboratory several experiments designed to give our students the required laboratory expertise to be successful in the integrated laboratories.   A research type, inquiry-based project is described where students synthesize racemic a hydroxyketones using umpolung , a polarity-reversal approach, investigate chelating versus non-chelating reducing agents, and finally determine the diastereoselectivity of these reducing processes by NMR spectroscopy."