Harvey F. Blanck's Home Page

IChemistry Department Homepage    
e-mail:  blanckh@apsu.edu

 In 1994 I retired from full time teaching, but worked half time in the Chemistry Department as Instrument Lab Manager and taught an evening section of General Chemistry.  In 1997 I worked just part time as a Research Chemist doing molecular modeling with several undergraduate chemistry majors.  When the new science building was completed in 2000, I ceased all teaching activities at APSU. Currently I am particularly interested in three areas pertaining to physical chemistry.

(1) El Nino: 1997 was the year of one of the largest El Nino events ever recorded. Both NASA and NOAA collected data concerning that El Nino. NASA's TOPEX satellite radar altimetry data is used to generate graphics of El Nino in the Pacific Ocean. After looking at NASA's data, it became apparent that the total amount of excess thermal energy in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean could be determined because warm water floats in cooler water in much the same way that ice floats. The radar altimeter can measure the size of the warm water bump.  If you may wish to read the paper I published in the Journal of Chemical Education, goto: JCE article. For the TOPEX data and image used in the JCE paper go to my TOPEX webpage.  If you would like to learn more about El Nino, you may wish to visit NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's TOPEX project Website at http://topex-www.jpl.nasa.gov/ and NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory's (PMEL) ATLAS buoy data Web site at http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/toga-tao/realtime.html.

(2) Energy conservation: I have put together a few comments concerning this topic in my Energy  Conservation webpage.

(3) Diffusion and Gravity Current Models and Speadsheets:  See my Diffusion Model webpage for construction of plastic models. See my Professional Information webpage for links to published articles.

On a personal note, I have been an avid racquetball player for thirty years and still play several matches per week.  It has worked wonders in keeping my lower back problems under control.

For additional information concerning my professional activities, please refer to my Professional Information webpage.