The combined efforts of Dr. Margaret Grant, Dr. Jeffery Thompson and Principal Investigator Professor James W. Zubrick were rewarded with the award of a $10,000 grant from The Community Foundation for the Capital Region’s Bender Scientific Fund. The grant money will purchase a combustion calorimeter, which will be used in at least six different courses: Chemistry I, Physical Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, General Nutrition, Sports and Exercise Nutrition, and Ecology.
Biology, General Nutrition, and Sports and Exercise Nutrition courses will use the instrument to analyze caloric content of foodstuffs and supplements for human nutrition. General Nutrition serves allied health science students at the college, particularly in Nursing, and students planning to continue in the Nutrition degree programs at The Sage Colleges.
Sports and Exercise Nutrition enrolls Biological Sciences students with particular interest in exercise physiology and all Physical Education majors, for whom Sports and Exercise Nutrition is a required foundation course. Awareness of caloric intake is especially important to the student athlete and to those who will train them. This nutrition course will use the combustion calorimeter to determine the energy content of foods consumed by the student-athletes and relate that information to general health, weight control and athletic performance.
In Chemistry courses, combustion calorimetry experiments allow for determination of enthalpies (heats) of combustion as well as other energy values such as strain energy, which are useful in a variety of applications. The instrument will be used in Chemistry I, HVCC’s general chemistry course for Physical Science and Engineering majors, as well as in the Principles of Physical Chemistry elective course and in Organic Chemistry.
Chemistry I course students learn the basics of combustion calorimeter operation and are also introduced to the theory behind the technique. Students who then continue with the physical chemistry elective progress to more sophisticated operation of the combustion calorimeter and delve further into the theory upon which the technique is based. Such study is particularly important for students of chemistry who will be transferring to baccalaureate programs.
Published: Thu, 12 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000 by e.bryant