ESP Biography

Want to find out what College Board took from you years ago when they got rid of MO theory from AP Chem? Molecular orbitals (MOs) sit at the core of modern chemistry and let us explain a surprising range of things. We'll build up the basics of MO theory and use it in a couple examples to show off its predictive power. Everyone with at least a little chemistry under their belt is welcome, whether you're interested in how a chemist actually thinks or if you just want a stress-free peek into college chem classes.

Science is rarely correct right away but has the remarkable ability to consistently course-correct. We’ll take a look at a few examples to see how science has been led astray in the past and how the work of diligent scientists seals these cracks. In each case study, we’ll ask the question of why it occurred - from innocent mistakes to malicious deception. We'll do this by focusing on two important but contentious areas of research: superconductivity and drug discovery. You should hopefully walk away with an appreciation for the scientific community, or at least some very niche gossip.

Semiconductors have taken over the modern world in the past 30 years - in everything from your computers, lights, solar cells, and more. That being said, you often don't get a chance to think about how these materials actually have the properties they do. We will walk through basic concepts in solid materials to understand this, with hands-on demos to illustrate them.

Basically everything around us is made up of the same things: protons, neutrons, electrons, and a whole lot of empty space. The only thing that can make things different is where they are and how many of each there are. We will look at how the arrangement and number of these fundamental particles leads to an astonishing range of properties. Why are iron and copper metals, but only iron a magnetic one? How do we predict what an unfamiliar material’s properties might be? By thinking through these questions together, we’ll take a peek into the thought processes that physicists and chemists use to explore solids.

Science is seldom correct at first but has the remarkable ability to course-correct and reorient itself over time. We’ll take a look at a few examples to see how science has been led astray in the past and how the work of diligent scientists works to seal these cracks. In each case study, we’ll ask the question of why it occurred - from limited tools to individual deception to broader social forces. Some of the topics we will cover are the death of alchemy and the Schön scandal. You should hopefully walk away with an appreciation for the scientific community and a few good historical stories.

"Quantum" is one of those words that can seem mysteriously futuristic and frustratingly confusing. Lucky for us, we don't need rigorous (and intimidating) math to begin to unravel the mystery that quantum mechanics can sometimes look like. A broad, conceptual overview of quantum mechanics will be given, with a particular focus on real experimental results that reflect some of the unintuitive results of quantum theory.