ScienceMakers Toolkit Manual - The History Makers

Clip 3 - Infl uential Teachers: I guess the fi rst teacher that had an impact on me and made me believe I was
something special was a teacher named Mrs. Whitcliff…She loved to hear me read. She thought my voice was
so melodious. She thought I read with such eloquence that she’d have me reading before the class. I think this
was fourth or fi fth grade… After I’d read, she say, “Isn’t his voice beautiful? Isn’t he just a wonderful reader?”
and the kids would be looking around saying, “What’s wrong with this woman?” You know, “We don’t hear
anything special.” But her special interest in me encouraged me also, and… I don’t know why she thought I was
so special, but she really thought I was special and treated me that way. And because of that also I wanted to
perform better.
Clip 4 - Chemistry Set: And I just knew that I loved science, it was just something I’d… Early on, when I was
about twelve years old, my father got me a chemistry set because I kept begging for a chemistry set. I don’t
know why. Oh, I do know why, I take it back. It was Mr. Wizard on television, I used to watch… That was my
favorite show when I was growing up, Mr. Wizard, and so I wanted a chemistry set so I could do chemistry. My
grandmother wouldn’t let me play with it in the house. We’d have to go outside because she was afraid we’d
burn the house down. But I still have fond remembrance of that chemistry set. And I was talking to a group of
students recently about it and I couldn’t remember exactly when we got the chemistry set so I called my brother
up and said, “When did we get that chemistry set?” And he said, “Why are you asking that?” I said, “Because I
was talking to a class about it.” And he said, “That’s amazing, I was just talking to a class about that exact same
chemistry set.” And so, you know, obviously it had some impact on both of us.
Clip 5 - Spectroscopy: When I left graduate school, one of the things I developed was a new instrument for
measuring fl uorescent spectroscopy. Fluorescence has to do with, you shine light on a molecule, and molecules
give you off a different light. Both of those lights are characteristics of the molecule. The light that’s absorbed,
and the light that’s given off. And so I developed an instrument that would measure all the light that’s absorbed
and given off simultaneously for all molecules at a given time. And so when I left school I started applying that
instrument, I developed another instrument similar to it and started applying it to various applications. So that
was the focus of my research a lot of [the] time, using that instrument to identify molecules. In fact, it was a
video camera really, that I used as a detector. The image was two-dimensional. I would have a two-dimensional
representation of the molecule and it would be the light that was given off as a function of exciting wavelength
and emitting wavelength and that image could be plotted, you know, as a television image in two dimensions.
So I could apply that to identifying molecules in pollutants, like polyaromatic hydrocarbons and different kinds
of molecules. That was my fi rst area of research.
Clip 6 - Recent Research: Since I’ve come here, I’ve started getting into the area of separation science, where
I develop… Most drugs are chiral, and chirality has to do with handedness, just like my hand, my left hand and
my right hand are mirror images of each other, but I can’t superimpose them. There are molecules like that,
that are mirror images of each other, same chemical formula and can’t be superimposed. They have a special
name. They’re called chiral molecules, and most drugs exist in that form. They’re chiral. They have two forms,
one form, they’re both called enantiomers. One might be called the “R” form and the other one called the “S”
form. And one form might be very benefi cial to you medicinally. The other form might be very detrimental to
you. And there was a drug called Thalidomide, which was given to pregnant women in the 60s, and it turns out
that was exactly the case. One form was benefi cial; it was an anti-nausea drug. The other one was a teratogen,
causing birth defects. And so women that took this drug gave birth to babies with no arms, no legs or truncated
arms and legs… Not only do they look alike, but it’s only in the presence of other chiral molecules that they act
different. If you didn’t have another chiral molecule, they would behave exactly the same. They would have the
same melting point, boiling point. They would react exactly the same, but only in a chiral environment. That
is, an environment where you have other molecules that are mirror images. Turns out the body is a factory for
those kind of molecules; all proteins are mirror images, have mirror images because all of the amino acids have
mirror images. So proteins…the body is highly selective. The body only uses pretty much L amino acids, it only
uses the D form of the sugars and so the body is probably the most selective machine that you can fi nd. So when
they introduce these two forms, the body says, “I don’t like this other form,” and started... So what happens
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Chemistry