EDUCATION
Service academies enrich chemistry programs Navy, Air Force, and Army academies build staffs, curriculums to meet needs of modern career officers Stepped-up emphasis on chemistry is SOP at the military service academies. Although their main objective remains the same—the training of career officers—the services are becoming more deeply enmeshed in technology. And those responsible for training future officers recognize that better training in chemistry is necessary for the modern, well-trained officer. All the academies have been taking steps to bring their chemistry departments up to date. For example, the Naval Academy in Annapolis is building a $14 million science building which will house chemistry along with mathematics and other sciences. To strengthen teaching and curriculums, the academies are adding Ph.D. chemists to their faculties and are offering programs which allow students to major in chemistry. Last June, for instance, the Air Force Academy, near Colorado Springs, Colo., graduated its first three chemistry majors. Having major programs at the academies has the advantage that if an officer decides not to stay in the military service he is prepared to be a chemist in industry or to go to graduate school. On an organizational level, there are signs that chemistry is coming into its own at West Point. After teaching chemistry for 145 years, West Point will get its own department this year when it splits its combined department of physics and chemistry. At the younger (only 121 years old) Naval Academy in Annapolis, the chemistry department is still a "committee" in the science department. Likewise, chemists at the 11-year-old Air Academy share department status with physiology. Requiring major attention during the building of a department is its faculty. Of the three service academies, the Naval Academy has the largest chemistry teaching staff. Thirty-two faculty members tend to the chemistry requirements of 4000 of this nation's future naval officers. The Air Academy, with a student body of 3500, has a 21-member chemistry faculty. And West Point's 3350 cadets are taught chemistry by a 20-man faculty. All three academies hope to reach the authorized (by Congress) size of 4400 by 1972 44 C&EN AUG. 15, 1966
and will expand their faculties proportionately. Make up of the faculties at the academies differs. Half the chemistry stall at Annapolis is civilian, the other half military. Both the Army and Air Force academies have all-military faculties. Emphasis on chemistry at the academies is relatively recent. Seven years ago, for instance, the only chemistry course offered at Annapolis was the introductory core course in general chemistry. Now it's possible to take 12 semesters of chemistry. At Annapolis this fall, the entire entering class of 1300 midshipmen will take the required core course in freshman chemistry. About 100 of them will validate the chemistry course if they can demonstrate proficiency equivalent to that normally gained by taking the course. About 80 others will qualify to take an honors course in freshman chemistry. The chemistry department expects about 34 of this fall's entering midshipmen to go on in chemistry, becoming what the Annap-
olis faculty calls "chemistry minors." A chemistry minor at Annapolis corresponds roughly to a chemistry major at a civilian college. The minor program requires students to take six chemistry semesters in addition to the core course. These include two semesters each of organic chemistry and physical chemistry and one semester each of analytical chemistry and advanced inorganic. (All three academies have two-semester school years. ) Midshipmen with exceptional aptitude for chemistry can elect to become majors—the equivalent of an honors program in an average civilian college. Chemistry department chairman W. D. Pennington expects about 12 potential chemistry majors to enter Annapolis this fall. Majors take four additional semesters of chemistry beyond the minor program. These four courses are qualitative organic, instrumental analysis, advanced inorganic analysis, and either biochemistry, electrochemistry, or catalysis. The chemistry faculty at Annapolis includes 11 Ph.D. chemists and
RESEARCH. Dr. Samuel P. Massie is one of the Naval Academy faculty doing research this summer
several other chemists within a year or two of getting their doctorates. The military half of the faculty has its share in this group. Teaching at Annapolis is done mainly in small sections rather than in large lecture groups. But large lectures are occasionally given, usually about 12 times a year to introduce a new topic or summarize material already presented. Classes contain about 18 men each and an instructor who takes his own class into the laboratory. Laboratory time runs slightly less than civilian college laboratory time in all the academies because of demanding drill and physical training. Faculty research at Annapolis has been limited in the past because of space, equipment, and funds. There are signs, however, that faculty research will increase, particularly when the Naval Academy's new science building is completed in 1968. First-class midshipmen (seniors) may do research in the Trident Scholar Program at Annapolis. For the past two years, a board of faculty members has selected midshipmen for this honor. In addition, first-class midshipmen may take a research course for credit. Air Academy. The chemistry curriculum at the Air Force Academy does not differ significantly from that at Annapolis. It begins with the usual two-term general chemistry core courses which all entering students (about 1050 this fall) must take or validate. Lt. Col. Charles K. Arpke of
the academy expects about 70 cadets to skip the course and 150 others to qualify for a one-term, no-laboratory, accelerated general chemistry course. The total number of chemistry courses offered at the Air Academy is about the same as at Annapolis and students at each school must take roughly the same number to graduate with a major. The class of 1967 and the class of 1968 each has 14 chemistry majors. In the class of 1969, last year's freshmen, 28 have elected to try for a major in chemistry. In the spring of 1964, the Air Force changed its graduation requirements to require its graduating students to have a major field of study. Chemistry is one of the fields approved as a major; there are 22 other majors available. Chemistry majors take organic and physical chemistry during their second and third years. They also take one required course and three elective courses in their final year. The required course is theoretical inorganic chemistry. The three électives are chosen from systematic inorganic chemistry, biochemistry, advanced physical chemistry, and advanced organic chemistry. The faculty, which includes five Ph.D. chemists, does not require its chemistry majors to do a research problem, but about 10 cadets will be doing one starting this coming school year. However, the academy encourages its chemistry faculty to do research. But finding time to do so is a big problem. Instructors are some-
CLASS. Maj. Richard W. Haffner conducts a typically small (maximum of 18) chemistry class at the Air Force Academy
times given time off from their teaching duties or are assigned to lighter teaching schedules so they can do research. Two Ph.D.'s are currently working at the Frank J. Seiler Research Laboratory maintained at the academy by the Air Force Office of Aerospace Research. Two other faculty members will get their doctorates within the next two years from the University of Texas. These four will expand the department to 25 when they return to teach. West Point. At West Point, four of the chemistry faculty members have doctorates in chemistry. Two more among the 20 will receive doctorates in chemistry within the next year or two, both from nearby Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. West Point has been offering courses beyond its ordinary and its enriched general chemistry courses for only the past two years. Now organic and physical chemistry courses are available, as well as an elective research project in the fourth year. Lt. Col. W. J. Hoff, Jr., of West Point's chemistry department expects to have about 725 students in the introductory course this year, and another 160 in the enriched version of the course. Also, 85 students will be taking organic chemistry and 26 will be taking physical chemistry, having taken organic last year. Probably three students will be allowed to elect a research project this year. The instruction method at West Point is essentially the same as at
LABORATORY. Lab sections are also small at the academies. Here a West Point cadet prepares to do a distillation AUG. 15, 1966 C&EN 45
Annapolis and at Colorado Springs. The great bulk of the course material is presented to small classroom-recitation groups of about 16 men each. Also, four or five times a year the general chemistry students—about half of them at a time—meet for large combined lectures. Generally chemistry classroom instructors, as at the Naval Academy, accompany their own classes into the laboratory. Each chemistry instructor, when he joins the West Point faculty, must teach a nonenriched general chemistry section as part of his training.
Cadets in the small recitation sections at West Point are ranked strictly according to achievement. Each member of each section is given a number (one to 16) which evaluates his standing in the class. The sections within a course are ranked, too, according to student ability. The best students are in section one, the next best in section two, and so on. During the year, a student may climb to a higher section or fall to a lower section, depending on his progress (or regress) relative to his classmates.
Midshipman to physicist, A. A. Michelson was an admiral in his own endeavor Physical evidence of the increasing emphasis on science at the U.S. Naval Academy will be its new $14 million science building. Scheduled for completion in 1968, it will house chemistry laboratories and classrooms as well as those for mathematics, physics, and other sciences. The academy will dedicate its new science building to an illustrious alumnus, Nobel Prize winner Albert Abraham Michelson, class of 1873. Physicist Michelson, who also taught chemistry at Annapolis, was the first American to win the Nobel Prize in physics (1907). He won it for measuring the speed of light. Although not an admiral in the Navy, perhaps Michelson was as he once commented, an ''admiral in his own field of endeavor." Others recognized his contributions to science. For instance, Albert Einstein referred to him (on the first page of the New York Times, May 10, 1931) as the master who awakened in him the concept of the theory of relativity. Shortly after graduating from the Naval Academy, Michelson returned to the academy to become an instructor in chemistry and physics. According to his contemporaries, he had done minimum studying while a midshipman, but his excellent academic record attested to his brilliance. As an instructor, he continued to make life as easy as possible for himself. Michelson admitted, " I managed to keep my ignorance hidden by reading up in the textbook about ten pages in advance of the class." Shortly, however, the classroom-recitation system which made this method of preparation possible was revised to include lectures and demonstrations. At his superior's direction, Michelson set out to prepare a lecture on speed-of-light measurements. While reviewing known methods, Michelson hit upon placing the light source in the principal focus of the lens so that the emerging light rays would be parallel. This, he reasoned, would allow a plane mirror to reflect the rays back to the source, providing an image regardless of mirror distance. Increasing distance he knew would increase deflection which in turn would increase accuracy. Using only the crude equipment he could pick up around the physics laboratory, he set up his apparatus with the modest hope of getting rough velocity values close to those already reported. But, as he later said, "Much to my surprise, I discovered that, with our homemade apparatus, we were measuring the velocity of light with considerably greater accuracy than anybody had measured it before." His interest in the project flared, inciting him to spend $10 of his own money for a better rotating mirror to refine his data. At this point, the newspapers picked up the story and his experiments became widely read. Michelson's father-in-law heard of his work, became interested, and donated $2000 to the project. This allowed Michelson to extend his light path to 500 feet, where he got his now famous value—186,508 miles per second for the speed of light. Later, he and a chemist friend, E. W. Morley, devised an experiment, now known as the Michelson-Morley experiment, which showed that two parts of a divided light ray, when traveling at right angles to each other, travel at the same speed. This shows that the motion of the earth does not affect the velocity of light and that the absolute motion of the earth can therefore never be measured in this way. The Michelson-Morley experiment also confirmed Einstein's theory of relativity.
46 C&EN AUG. 15, 1966
Nitrogen trichlorideether mix explodes A mixture of nitrogen trichloride in di-?î-butyl ether exploded in a refrigerator in a laboratory at Gannon College (Erie, Pa.). A senior chemistry student was preparing the NCl a by bubbling chlorine for 45 minutes into a flask containing 300 ml. of a 10% aqueous solution of ammonium sulfate and 100 ml. of di-n-butyl ether. The flask was cooled in an ice bath and the mixture stirred vigorously during the reaction. The flask was fitted with a glass bubbler, a trap for excess chlorine, and a stopper which could be removed so small aliquots could be taken for analysis. The student stopped the flow of chlorine when the concentration of XC13 approached 18% (by weight). He then separated the ether layer and washed it twice with 250 ml. of a 5% solution of ammonium sulfate. Fifty milliliters of the ether-NCl :i mixture over 100 ml. of 5% ammonium sulfate solution in a narrow-mouth, screw-top glass bottle was placed in a refrigerator. The remaining ether solution was kept out of the refrigerator for final analysis and stability studies at room temperature. An explosion occurred in the refrigerator five minutes after the ether solution had been placed in it. Flames shot 5 to 10 feet from the refrigerator door. The foi.e of the explosion threw open the door, breaking the inside part of the door and nearly all the bottles inside. However, two 5pound cans of commercial grade diethyl ether were left intact. All evidence points to the explosion's not being caused by any electrical parts of the refrigerator coming in contact with the solvent-containing atmosphere, according to Dr. Gert G. Schlessinger of Gannon's chemistry department. The thermostat was in good working order after the explosion. Dr. Schlessinger says that solutions of 3 and 5% NC13 had been prepared safely with no ice bath in his laboratory. However, when a 12% solution was prepared without the use of an ice bath, decomposition of NC13 became so violent that the mixture had to be disposed of by adding a cold solution of sodium hydroxide. EDUCATION IN BRIEF
Teachers may apply for lectureships during 1967-68 under the Fulbright-Hays Act. Undergraduate and graduate university teaching positions (for periods varying from two to nine months) in chemistry and biochemistry are open in Afghanistan, Argentina,
Austria, Ceylon, Republic of China, Denmark, Finland, Ghana, Honduras, Pakistan, Singapore, Spain, Thai land, United Arab Republic, Vietnam, and other countries. Application forms and details are available from the Committee on International Ex change of Persons of the Conference Board of Associated Research Coun cils, 2101 Constitution Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20418. Three fellowship programs for 1966 get renewed support from the National Science Foundation. About 350 science faculty fellowships are avail able for science teachers in junior col leges and four-year colleges and uni versities in the U.S. These fellow ships are designed to improve college teaching. About 100 senior postdoc toral fellowships will be awarded to scientists to supplement their training by additional study or research, with a view to increasing their competence in their specialized science or related fields. Persons applying for these two types should write to the fellowships section of the NSF in Washington, D.C. The fellowships office of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D . C , is accepting appli cations for about 55 postdoctoral fel lowships. These will be awarded to U.S. citizens for further study in science, preferably in one of the NATO countries (other than the U.S.). Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) can be detected in minute quantities in sugar cubes by gas chromatography [/. Pharm. ScL, 55, 861 (1966)]. Dr. Czeslawa Radecka and Dr. Ishwar C. Nigam of the Canadian Food and Drug Directorate dissolved sugar cubes impregnated with LSD (50 mg., for example) in aqueous sodium bicar bonate and then extracted the free base with methylene chloride. The LSD thus extracted was hydrogenated with Adam's catalyst, and the resulting relatively volatile product was then identified by gas chromatography. LSD's identity was confirmed by thinlayer chromatography of the eluate. An isochronous cyclotron operable at 15 m.e.v. will be installed at Duke Uni versity's regional nuclear laboratory in Durham, N.C., in combination with a 15-m.e.v. tandem Van de Graaif accel erator. The combination, called the Cyclo-Graaff, takes advantage of the best features of the two types of nu clear particle accelerators and gives laboratories with tandem accelerators a low-cost way to extend the energy range of precision nuclear studies.
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