Just A Little Snakebit

Without giving it all away this is the coolest chemistry experiment ever! I needed the chemicals and some glassware. He said, “Yes.”

This afternoon on the 4:00 O’clock news I talked about the severe weather outbreak in the south over the past few days. This April has seen more tornadoes recorded than any other since records have been kept. It wasn’t what I originally intended to talk about. My original intent was to do a chemistry experiment on-the-air.

I think I’m snakebit as far as this experiment goes.

Originally I contacted the chair of the Chemistry Department at University of Hartford. I wanted to show a starch iodine clock on-the-air. Without giving it all away this is the coolest chemistry experiment ever! I needed the chemicals and some glassware.

He said, “Yes.”

Today I headed to UHart. I’ve been before, but not recently so I punched “University of Hartford” into my Mapquest4Mobile and headed north. I arrived at my destination about five minutes early.

Unfortunately it was an abandoned industrial park in nearby Bloomfield! Not a good sign.

I reprogrammed, found the school and Dr. Eric Mahan. He was in a white lab coat. He was the chemistry professor from central casting!

He took me to a chemistry lab. I wish I would have done more of this (OK, any of this) in college. Everyone looked smart and purposeful. The lab was well equipped.

My chemicals were in bottles and packed away in a cardboard box. I was shaking hands ready to leave. My cellphone rang (or whatever they do nowadays).

It was my boss. Problem!

As it turns out chemicals in my work building need to be accompanied by forms… and I hadn’t filled them out. Who knew?

I put the box down.

Dr. Mahan was understanding. We’ll try and do this next Tuesday. Hopefully I’ll have pre-approved forms and know where to drive.

Like I said, coolest chemistry experiment ever. Gotta do it.

You’ll love it.

5 thoughts on “Just A Little Snakebit”

  1. Geoff, I have faith in you and trust your experiment will go just fine. Howevet, I work in your building, and if there is a problem and the fire dept. needs to stop by, and I need to walk down several fligjts of stairs due to a fire in the building, we are going to have to have a little chat! Or, call me before the experiment commences, and I can watch it on my iphone in the lobby! Good luck, my favorite weather forecaster and experiment genius!

    1. Robert, You said it! We spent hours in our basements trying to blow stuff up!!! LoL… we really did learn a lot from those sets… I still use some of that chemistry as an Env. manager for a plating shop….

  2. I told my oldest son about this, Geoff (he is a UH alum), so hopefully he can tune in when you get to do the experiment.

  3. Geoff,
    I don’t quite know how you can work this into a science segment, but you mentioned that the Courant presses being downstairs from the news room. Any chance of showing the presses on TV sometime? Maybe talking about how the ink is transferred onto the paper, etc? (I used to build printing presses for a living – printing is an interesting process.)

Leave a Reply to Jim Murphy Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *