This is Max’s molecule.
Max Mahoney (Chemistry) spent several years of his life working on this very molecule for his PhD. The other day, he was able to print it and hold it in his hand. That’s the good stuff.
Max Mahoney (Professor of Chemistry) had an idea about using the Innovation Center’s 3D printer to create some manipulatives to help demonstrate to chemistry students concepts of atomic bonding. Something like this:
Here’s what Max has to say about it:
The nature of chemical bonds is rooted in complex physical forces. These forces result in atoms being both attracted and held apart at a specific distance. We hope to develop a hands-on model for students, which conveys this important chemical information. Currently available designs of molecular model kits allow the construction of complex molecules in 3 dimensions, but do a poor job of representing the exact nature of each chemical bond. Our goal is to create a model that will allow students to feel the chemical bond and see the bond lengths. The recently discovered ‘inverter magnets’ have the property of both repelling and attracting each other, so that the atoms seem to hold each other in a ‘tractor beam.’ The distance they are separated represents the bond length.
Initial designs will focus on demonstrating the principle of bond length and bond vibration between two atoms. Enclosures for the inverter magnets are currently being 3D printed and their shapes optimized. These models use strong neodymium magnets so that students can feel the significant push and pull of the two ‘atoms.’ Magnets of different strengths will result in varying degrees of bond strengths (and vibrational rates), which can be measured by the student using force gauges.
Subsequent designs of these models will demonstrate each atom’s unique bonding pattern. Specialized cases for the inverter magnets will be 3D printed to mimic an atom’s ability to form multiple bonds.
The key aspect of these models is that the magnets do not touch and can be made to vibrate at a specific frequency so that the model is dynamic. Currently, students are taught these concepts with either static models, or with video animation. The strength of our model lies in the ability for students see and feel tangible objects displaying atomic principles on a macro scale.
We did some design talking/drawing:
Max went home, bought some magnets, taught himself SketchUp, and has printed a few different prototypes.
Stay tuned…
Years ago Max Mahoney (Chemistry) and I did some work with Chladni plates, but ended up breaking the speaker motor we were using. Lately I’ve been dreaming of different ways to visualize sound as part of ongoing data sonification efforts, so I knocked together a little prototype using a Bluetooth transmitter connected to the modular synth:
and a little Bluetooth speaker driver thing:
Nothing spectacular, but the sand did indeed dance!
We’ve been doing a bunch of work and prototyping in data sonification, for example playing weather data on music boxes, and building out a modular synth rig to provide realtime sound of sensor data. Max Mahoney (Chemistry) has been a key partner in the work, and has ideas about how we might sonify various chemical processes. The other day, we had the opportunity to do a rough prototype of sonifying liquid color change.
The first prototype (above) involved simply adding food coloring to a beaker of water, and using the ADDAC 308 module to transform light data to CV, which when fed to the modular synth lowers the frequency of the audible sine wave. The second prototype involved more carefully controlling the light by placing the apparatus in a box, sticking a battery + LED on the outside of the beaker, and poking a hole in the side of the box for the light sensor and another in the top so we could use a syringe to introduce the food coloring. Here’s version 2:
Lots yet to do, but we think we’ve got a functional prototype that Max intends to use in the classroom this semester.
Jason Pittman (Geosciences), Max Mahoney (Chemistry) and I took the new quadcopter out to Lava Cap Winery to do a test flight.
Dronedeploy (the system we use for flight planning and analysis) offers some interesting post-flight map creation and analysis. Here are the Plant Health and Elevation views.
We were stoked to see the Model view for the first time.
We’re still figuring out what it all means, but we’re excited about the preliminary results!
Max Mahoney (Chemistry) and I spent a long day brewing a couple of batches of beer recently. Now familiar with the process and how to execute it in the makerspace, we were able to add lots of variables and processes and gear, building on our experience with Brew Day v2.0, and our original, somewhat less-than-successful Brew Day v1.0.
One of the biggest changes to the process this time around had to do with the water. Specifically, we started with deinonized (DI) water, and Max added various salts to create ideal water, which as I understand it is a big factor in the overall success of the end product.
We brewed two batches of beer, and one of kombucha, which we’re fermenting in one of the smaller fermenters.
Testing the pH using one of the new meters.
Improvised wort chiller, until our conterflow setup arrives.
Into the fermenters.
We documented things more completely throughout the process this time. Timing notes are especially important, as we’re still working out how these brew days work as labs and activities. How many simultaneous batches make sense, and how many people can effectively work in the space at the same time.
Meanwhile, batch the second looks and tastes pretty good, with some distinct and pleasant apricot notes.
We’ve got both fermenters in The Spider Shed (a former chemical storage building that we’re repurposing as a nanobrewery) hooked up to a heating and cooling system, and they’re happily bubbling away.
We’re still learning so much, and the process is becoming even more interesting. Max is especially stoked about tweaking the water chemistry, and has lots of ideas about wrapping class activities and labs around that process. A couple more days, and we’ll cold crash these batches and keg ’em up!
With some new fermentation science gear on the ground, Max Mahoney (Professor of Chemistry and makerspace champion) and I decided to spend a day brewing a pale ale, following our first brew day some months ago. Brewing is mostly a lot of cleaning…
…and sterilizing…
…and waiting. Waiting for things to heat up. Waiting for things to cool down.
Sparging is my special gift.
After the sparge, we checked the brix with our new brix checker.
We weren’t even close, but realized that we were sampling from the top, which was largely water from the sparge. After the boil, we took another reading, and we were right where we needed to be.
Here we’re transferring from the Robobrew to the new Ss Chronical fermenter.
The Chronical has a heating element, and we’ve got a chiller on the way. Here Max is setting the fermentation temperature.
The brew complete, we set up a webcam to stream the bubbling so that we could monitor it over the long weekend. So far, so good! It’ll be maybe two weeks until we can sample the outcome.
Sometimes it seems like there are too many things happening in the Innovation Center to keep track of. This week felt like that. Here’s a recap:
Students in our new ECE course Making for Educators started working on their cardboard pinball machines, which they’ll finish up in our next class session.
Max (student and amateur mycologist) harvested and cooked some pink oyster mushrooms, and pasteurized and inoculated some oat straw, packing it into our first two 4″ pot prototypes, which we made using a 3D printer and our vacuum former.
Some snazzy new stainless steel fermenting vessels arrived, and Max Mahoney (Chemistry professor and makerspace champion) assembled one in preparation for another brewing day as part of our fermentation science efforts.
Our staff hosted a Palentine’s Day Crafternoon event.
Finally, visitors from both College of Alameda FabLab and Lichen K-8 came out to tour our space and talk about making…
A busy week, and the semester is just getting rolling.
Toward the end of last semester – after lengthy and vigorous and unflinching hacking of red tape – we offered the first workshop – Beer Science: Measuring Beer Bitterness – as part of our ongoing Fermentation Science efforts. We started the day in the Chemistry lab, where Max Mahoney (Chemistry professor and makerspace faculty champion) described the chemistry of beer, and led students through a procedure for measuring beer bitterness.
Here’s how Max describes it:
The goal of this workshop was to expose students to a quantitative and qualitative analysis of beer bitterness. The chemistry of hops and bittering compounds was presented along with a discussion of the chemical procedures involved in this analysis. The following procedure was used to quantitatively analyze beer bitterness. Three beers were selected containing different levels of the hop-derived bittering agents. Students sonicated the beer to expel carbon dioxide, performed a liquid-liquid extraction of the hop acids with iso-octane, and measured the UV and visible absorption spectrum for their sample. We used the visible absorption spectra to help classify the style of beer. The UV absorption was used to quantify the concentration of hop acids and thus the bitterness of the beer (measured in IBUs).
Chemistry students of all levels were able to learn advanced analytical methods used in the beverage industry to analyze beer bitterness. General and organic chemistry lab techniques were utilized including UV-Vis spectroscopy, usage of micropipettes, and liquid-liquid extraction of organic compounds.
The Chemistry lab portion completed, we went over to the Innovation Center for some blind taste tests. Students sampled various beers, and then used PollEverywhere to report the perceived bitterness of the sample, the results of which we compared to the lab-derived values.
The event was a terrific success, and students were engaged and enthusiastic. We’ve got additional interdisciplinary FermSci workshops and projects planned for this semester, including more beer chemistry, sauerkraut making, curriculum development, and a partnership with a local employer for integrating IOT technology into kombucha fermentation.
The new semester has started, and things seem to be happening at a furious pace.
As part of professional development days preceding the semester, we invited faculty and staff for a makerspace update, and facilitated a prototyping workshop, solving problems having to do with babies and robots.
Our staff did some outreach to invite students to participate in our community.
Also on the community front, we participated (for the third time) in the third annual Georgetown School Family Tinker Night, an event coordinated by our sister lab at Georgetown School. We brought out a 3D bioprinter and a plotter, and the ever popular Nova (our space bunny mascot) fresnel lens family face distorters.
Meanwhile, back in the lab…
The jars we inoculated with mushroom spawn earlier in the month are thriving, and we’ll be scaling that project up soon.
The Science Fish have returned from the library, as we plan and implement whatever v2.0 of our aquaponics efforts will look like. Yes, those are the same three fish – Phoebe, Phinley, and Phreud – still with us after more than two years, and yes, the water cleared up quickly and it’s crystal clear now.
As part of the CCC Maker grant, we’re able to pay interns to do makerspace-related projects, and some of them are working on a large-scale, interactive periodic table of the elements, to be installed in our large lecture hall. Here Max Mahoney (Chemistry) and Nicole (makerspace facilitator extraordinaire) review some prototypes.
We’re looking forward to starting the semester with a Grand Opening next week, and to continuing to advance various efforts, including FermSci and biotinkering, some salon-type events in the planning stages, and a million other things I’m probably forgetting. Onward and upward.