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ACS 2024-2025

Collage of students freezing different foods with liquid nitrogen.

Liquid Nitrogen Social

We had a blast freezing different foods in Liquid Nitrogen at our Nitrogen Social!

How the Chemistry Works:
Nitrogen’s boiling point is about -196°C (-320°F). Room temperature is around 20°C (70°F). When the nitrogen is exposed to room temperature, it starts to boil and evaporate (it goes through a phase change), causing the steam!

Collage of students learning about cyanotyping and showing off their images.

Picture-Perfect Chemistry

How the Chemistry Works:
Potassium ferricyanide (orange jar) and ferric ammonium citrate (blue jar) are UV light sensitive. When the chemicals are applied to paper and then exposed to UV light (most commonly used is sunlight), the chemicals exposed to the sunlight are fixed onto the paper. The chemicals in the parts of the paper that are covered by an object are not fixed to the paper. When you put the paper into a bath of water, the chemicals in the protected parts of the paper will wash out, leaving a white color. The areas exposed to sunlight reflect wavelengths that make up the color Prussian blue!

Slime and Snacks

Thank you to all who came to our Slime and Snacks event! We had a blast!

Collage of students making volcanoes out of craft materials and chemicals.m

Science Volcano

How the Chemistry Works:
When baking soda (a base, also known as sodium bicarbonate) and vinegar (an acid, which contains acetic acid) mix, they form CO₂ (carbon dioxide gas). The CO₂ forms bubbles, which become trapped in the liquid mixture of vinegar, baking soda, byproducts (H₂O and sodium acetate), and soap (which makes the bubbles last longer). The trapped bubbles form the foam.

Collage of students presenting a tri-fold poster about ACS UMN

Fall CSE Fair

Thank you to all who visited us at the CSE fair! We loved meeting you all and sharing information about ACS!

Past Meetings

Collage of students studying plastic and using silicone molds to create Halloween shapes out of Chitin.

Halloween Chitin Demo

What do learning about the chemistry of plastics and arthropod exoskeletons have in common? You can see both at ACS-UMN, as we learned all about how chitin can make a new biodegradable and renewable plastic.

Members got hands-on with this demo lab as they mixed chitin powder with acetic acid to make a slurry that will eventually become a hard plastic after drying.

And now we wait! These molds produced some really cool ghouls for our members, with the figures retaining a hard shape with more chitin content.

Collage of a person using a torch to heat a beaker of glow stick contents in a dim room

Glowstick Torching Demo

We torched glowsticks as a fun way to represent rate laws and chemiluminescence!

How the Chemistry Works:

As the glow stick contents are heated, the molecules move and collide faster with more energy. When the molecules collide, they release light. When we heated the contents of the glow sticks, the fast reaction released an extremely bright glow! The reaction is slower when there is less heat, which is why glow sticks last longer in the freezer and have a dimmer glow!

Collage of student wearing bracelets with color changing beads.

UV Bracelet Making

How the Chemistry Works:

The beads absorb UV light, which causes the chemical forms within the beads to change. Different chemical forms absorb different wavelengths of light, which gives the beads a different color (purple and pink in our case) when they're in the sun!

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