This year, for the first time in recent memory, a student from the Greater Houston Section was honored at the national level for their submission to the Illustrated Poetry Contest for National Chemistry Week. This year’s theme was Marvelous Metals and Isabella Trong, a junior at Memorial High School, was the national 2^nd place winner for the 9-12 grade category with her poem on Aluminum. Hopefully this will be the start of the Greater Houston Section having more participation and winning a few more accolades at the national level. Isabella’s chemistry teacher is John Husted and he was excited to hear about her recognition. Please check out Isabella’s poem, which incorporates Aluminum’s characteristics, uses, and a bit of humor as well!

The ACS-GHS held its first online silent auction over the last two weeks of October to auction off chemistry-themed quilts and other items made in honor of the International Year of the Periodic Table. We're happy to report that the event was a great success, raising $665 in support of Project SEED and other GHS activities! We had bids come in from across the US and even some drama as a well timed final bid resulted in a last minute auction victory. Thank you to all our bidders for your support, and congratulations to our auction winners!

As part of the ACS-GHS celebration of 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic Table (IYPT), GHS Chair-Elect Crystal Young spearheaded efforts to have the IYPT officially recognized by the State of Texas and the City of Houston. October 26th, 2019 was proclaimed to be International Year of the Periodic Table Day by the City of Houston to coincide with the ACS-GHS Kids & Chemistry Outreach event at the Children's Museum during National Chemistry Week. On Friday, December 6th, ACS-GHS representatives visited City Hall to receive the proclamation commemorating the IYPT directly from Mayor Sylvester Turner. The Mayor commented on Twitter after the meeting, "It's important that young minds continue to be attracted to science in order to ensure the next generation of innovators."

Thank you to Mayor Turner for the Commendation! We are grateful for his support of science, chemistry, and the International Year of the Periodic Table.

Botto joined the ACS in 1972 as a college student.  He later joined ACS-Greater Houston Section (GHS) in 1975 when he moved to Houston to work for Exxon. He was elected to the ACS-GHS Executive Board about 1979 and served in several capacities throughout the 80s, receiving the ACS-GHS Local Section Award in 1982 and the ACS Regional Award for the Southwest Region in 1994. He also served as Chairman of the SW Region in 1995.

In 1978, Exxon asked Bob to conduct a chemistry show for high school students visiting the campus in Baytown.  That began his long career in chemistry outreach. He expanded into a school outreach program and developed a chemical “magic” stage show and performed with volunteer assistants at schools in mainly the Baytown area several times during the school year. Each year for National Chemistry Week, ExxonMobil would allow him time to tour the schools and perform several shows during that week.  When ExxonMobil developed a “science ambassador” program for schools, Bob’s chemistry shows and demonstrations fit in perfectly.  Demand for his chemistry shows increased steadily and Bob recruited a circle of volunteers to help.

When the National ACS conducted the Kids & Chemistry Pilot Study in the fall of 1993, the Greater Houston Section was chosen as one of four pilot sites nationally. Bob served as a coordinator for the Houston Kids & Chemistry Program and helped to recruit volunteers, test the hands-on kits and orchestrate presentations at the various venues. In 1994 Bob helped the ACS assess the effectiveness of the program in capturing the interest of the kids and changing their opinions toward science and continued to serve National ACS as a member of their Kids & Chemistry Advisory Board for several years.  With the successful completion of the pilot, Bob took up the role of Kids & Chemistry coordinator for the GHS-ACS as Chairman of the “Chemistry in Community” Committee. Each year Bob conducted volunteer recruitment and training sessions, some in conjunction with the National ACS. He maintained a database of volunteers and encouraged them to conduct their own Kids & Chemistry programs at various venues such as libraries, rodeos, parks, camps, kids at work, shopping malls, churches, scouts’ events, museums etc.

Bob retired from ExxonMobil in 2010 but continues to be an active volunteer with the ACS-GHS. 2019 is the 4th year in a row that Bob has organized the Children's Museum National Chemistry Week hands on chemistry activities. The Children's Museum typically has 300 plus kids and parents visit our tables each year. The volunteers are college chemistry students and this year 58 signed up. 

He was elected a Fellow of the ACS in 2011 and in 2015 was presented the Helen Free Award for exemplary volunteer service to the ACS. We thank Bob for his years of volunteer service and salute his continued commitment to sharing the joy of chemistry with community members of all ages!

This Halloween instead of passing out candy to my co-workers, I passed out hands-on chemistry kits for the parents to do at home. I wanted to raise STEM awareness in the community with hopes those participating will develop a passion for chemistry and other sciences. I selected the experiments from the ACS website. ACS has a great website with Classroom Science Activities for teachers, but you knew that, right? They also have an excellent webpage to help teachers and parents facilitate hands-on experiments for kids to explain complex chemistry. 

 

Pictured: Wei Wang, Do Hoon Kim, Sujeewa Palayangoda, Hyuntae Yang, Gayani Pinnawala

The kits contained food dye, cotton swabs, plastic pipettes and instructions to demonstrate interfacial tension. 

For more information to delight and amaze your friends and family, visit: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/adventures-in-chemistry/experiments/colors-move.html

Kerry Spilker

ACS-GHS Community Affairs Committee Chair

Report from Kids & Chemistry organizer Bob Botto:

We had a wonderful time with the kids at the Children's Museum of Houston on Saturday, October 26th. Volunteers from University of Houston, Texas Southern University and Rice University arrived at 9 am to help me set up. I counted at least 25 so when it was time to welcome the kids at 10 am we were ready! Catherine Faler brought a small banner and a quilt. We had 5 tables set up: Color Changes with Juices, Radish Writing, Candy Experiments, Play Doh (because kids!) and a Theme table for Marvelous Metals. Each table was staffed with at least 4 volunteers. Extra volunteers who came to our event were used by the Children's Museum to staff the Slime Stations. Emily MacWilliams was my contact and facilitated everything.

The Theme table featured the properties of metals which make up 80 percent of the Periodic Table. Properties such as thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, ferromagnetism, malleability and ductility were featured with objects the kids and parents could touch and feel.

The hands on experiments were as fun as ever and we added candy experiments this year. At noon we fed all the volunteers pizza and drinks. We had 58 volunteers signed up and they were distributed between morning and afternoon shifts. 

At 11 am Houston City Councilwoman Karla Cisneros came by to present a proclamation from the Mayor's office declaring National Chemistry Week in Houston. The proclamation was read by Karla Cisneros and received by me and Crystal Young, ACS-GHS Chair-Elect.

Visitors continued to come and enjoy the exhibits until 3 pm when we shut it down. I would estimate in the range of 300-400 kids and adults visited the displays.

Our October seminar speaker was Sebastian Frommhold, a Forensic Analyst with the Texas Department of Public Safety. Mr. Frommhold spoke on the challenges of forensic drug analysis in a rapidly changing chemical and regulatory field, and the importance of understanding the advantages and limitations of your available analytical techniques.

This seminar was educational and entertaining but if you missed it, don't despair - the recording is available now on our YouTube channel!

Dr. Javoris Hollingsworth, Chair of the GHS Minority Affairs Committee, shared this update on a new MAC program:

Today (October 23rd) I really enjoyed speaking to the students at North Houston Early College High School as part of our Chemistry Career Roadshow, which is sponsored by the ACS-GHS Minority Affairs Committee. Through this event, talented students from under-served groups in STEM received the opportunity to learn about various careers they could pursue in chemistry and related fields.

Special thanks to Usha Devathosh, Ed.D. and school administrators for allowing me and our amazing team of professionals to visit and share career insight. Also, thanks to the ACS Senior Chemists Committee for providing us a grant to support this great cause.