Harvey F. Blanck, (e-mail:
blanckh@apsu.edu)
After retiring from full time teaching in December of 1993, I worked
in the chemistry department at Austin Peay as the Instrument Lab Manager until
December of 1996. After leaving the Instrument Lab Manager position, I
worked part time as a Research Chemist until the end of the 2000 academic
year. During this period I worked with several undergraduate students on a
molecular modeling research project and also assisted with a few instrument labs
primarily those involving infrared spectroscopy, x-ray fluorescence, and nuclear
magnetic resonance.
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. If you are interested in how radar altimetry
information may be used in chemistry courses, you may wish to read the paper I
published in the Journal of Chemical Education. (For the complete JCE article,
click
here. For the TOPEX data and picture used in the JCE paper, click here.) If you wish to
learn more about El Nino, you may wish to visit NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory's TOPEX project Web site 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 Cost and Conservation
page.
(3) Diffusion: See my Diffusion
Model page for construction of a plastic model demonstrating diffusion.
For additional information concerning my professional activities, you may
refer to my Selected
Professional Information page.
Last updated 10/23/03