Ch E Ambassadors bring a carnival of heat transfer, surfactant columns, combustion reactions, phase changes, Arrhenius effects, and la booms to Chapparral High School science class
A number of NMSU Chemical Engineering students braved the spring desert winds and traveled to Chapparral High School to provide a live science demonstration, and to promote higher education. An unbiased concensus of the NMSU students promoted NMSU as the best location to study. The question about starting salaries just keeps coming up at these demos, and our students smile discussing the loot they'll be pulling down when they graduate. As yet, the best story is still about that C coop student who found employment in the Virgin Islands at a starting salary and living allowance higher than any of his chemical engineering instructors. Even after the stories of gloriful salaries, the Ch E Ambassadors put into perspective the commitment necessary to be successful in the field of study, citing numerous examples of sacrifice they've had to make to get to this point.
It's a great time to be a Chemical Engineering Student at NMSU, because we get to play with matches flaming poles, blow our entire bottle of bubbles at once, make disturbing sounds, implode soda cans, and sublimate in a bottle.
Ch E studetnts demonstrate how to intentionally make a mess (the smiles and giggling say it all).
This is how a diehard thermodyanamicist crushes aluminum cans for recycle...
Demonstrating the Arrhenius' effect on the rate law using the exothermic reaction between aluminum and aqueous sodium hydroxide:
And if that's not exciting enough, we made hydrogen (this just smells of a great constant pressure batch reactor problem for the final exam)...
Insert the sound byte from the movie Psycho here (or alternatively, any musical selection from Monty Python's Flying Circus)...
Yes, even this guy is going to get paid a whole lot of money when he graduates. And he might even earn that money doing something like this...
To which the audience responded with thunderous applause...
Explaining how to exploit the sublimation of solid carbon dioxide achieving sufficient rate by establishing thermal conduction heat transfer conditions to a liquid phase with the goal of compromising the mechanical integrity of a polyethylene terephthalate vessel (photographs of la boom in the trash can out the door of the green house unavailable).
And just as quick as the carnage began, the Ch E Carnival of Thermodynamics, Transport, and Reaction Kinetics packs up and leaves town, leaving you with only your memories and your balloons...
<Insert that sound Pyscho again> You with the thermal gloves, stop that man with the fire before the memories are all that remain!
Students sat down to an earned meal at Los Mariachis after the day of demonstrations.