Summer 2024 Youth Outreach

2024-07-23

Writer(s): Steve Scherer

Girl Scouts visit chemistry lab

Fifteen Girl Scouts from Tippecanoe County visited the Jeffrey Dick laboratory in May to learn about electrochemistry. Dick, Richard B. Wetherill Associate Professor of Chemistry, and eight members of his lab set up different experiments where the girls circulated around four activity stations.

“At the lab station I ran, we had them make electrodes – something we use in our lab every single day. We call them microelectrodes. You seal a tiny platinum wire in a glass capillary. It’s done using a butane torch, so the kids had a lot of fun with that,” said Patrick Herchenbach, a second-year graduate student.

The girls also made batteries using pennies, tested the potential between two electrodes in a resting solution, and levitated a microdroplet using sound waves.

“Our lab does a lot of battery science, so we emphasized to them the importance of making better, more efficient batteries. And at my station we talked about how glucometers are electrochemical devices to test glucose levels,” Herchenbach explained.

The Jeffrey Dick lab was recommended to the Girl Scout group by Alia Pineda Medina, a youth program coordinator in Purdue’s Gifted Education Research and Resources Institute (GER²I).

“This was our first time partnering with the Girl Scouts. We want our students to have a variety of experiences that they don’t get in school, and that’s what really attracts a lot of families to come to GER²I. They see these classes are totally different than what is typically offered. So, this is a good way to show students an unfamiliar field that they can pursue,” said Alia Pineda Medina, who is a graduate student in the College of Education.

She says Dick lab members Patrick Herchenbach and Lynn Krushinski have both taught GER²I courses in the past, and that the program actively recruits grad students to share their knowledge and research, because many gifted students are already thinking about college at the middle school level.

Photo caption: Girl Scouts visiting Professor Jeffrey Dick’s lab in Purdue’s Brown Laboratory use pennies to recreate the first battery. Graduate and undergraduate students helped guide the girls through four different experiments that demonstrated electrochemistry.