 by Christa Colyer Department of Chemistry Wake Forest University Winston-Salem, North Carolina |
by Christa Colyer Department of Chemistry Wake Forest University Winston-Salem, North Carolina |
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| All too rarely does science meet with society in any kind of theatrical forum. To be able to convey difficult scientific facts and principles in an engaging and entertaining fashion while still preserving the truth of the science is no small feat. Some recent examples of resounding successes in this arena include the play Oxygen, written by chemists Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffman, and Copenhagen, the 2000 Tony Award winning play by Michael Frayn. The first of these plays struggles to uncover the discoverer of oxygen: Joseph Priestly, Antoine Lavoisier, or Carl Wilhelm Scheele, so that the first-ever retro-Nobel prize can be appropriately awarded, while the second speculates on the events that transpired during a hypothetical meeting in 1941 between the two long-time friends and brilliant physicists, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, who suddenly found themselves on opposite sides of WW II. Your job is to mount the first-ever North American stage production of the important and yet often times under appreciated van Deemter equation, which plays a pivotal role in understanding chromatographic separations in chemistry. This is a daunting task, especially given the rave reviews to which a similar performance played recently in Europe: |
| Brilliant. Stunning choreography and synchronization. Never before have there been more challenging roles for solute and solvent molecules. A feel-good performance of a vital piece of chemistry. Crystal clear depiction of three major contributions to band broadening in chromatography. van Deemter would be proud. |
Date Posted: 3/13/02 nas
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